The Political and Military Structures of the WTO

 		 
   

The political structures and institutions

 
    Quite in accordance with the nature of the Warsaw Pact as a military alliance and the ethics of Soviet information spread, little was or still today is known about the structures and processes governing the decision-making in the organization. The Treaty text however stipulated that as its chief organ a Political Consultative Committee (PCC) was to be framed. The PCC should consist of members of cabinet of the signatory states and convene at a minimum twice annually. In practise the representatives sent by the partner states to the Committee meetings were, except for the very onset, high-ranking communist party functionaries rather than cabinet ministers proper. Since the size of the national legations was in no way limited, the intraparty character of the PCC soon became further emphasized. The twice-a-year rule for PCC full sessions was neither taken very literally; between 1955 and 1982 there were only 19 publicized meetings, of which many seem to have been convened on an ad hoc basis. During the Gorbachev reign they became annual and were rotated around the various WTO capital cities (Holden, p. 14-15).

 
    The role of the PCC was never defined in concrete terms. It was usually described as an "co-ordinating" body whose task was to ensure the "fraternal cooperation of its members, and who should examine general political problems and international issues" (Grechko p. 22) and issue communiqués. If this really was so, it would give the Committee merely rubber-stamping authority over decisions actually taken elsewhere. The long intervals between sessions underline the very general function the PCC must have had instead of any practical purpose on a military level. (Fodor, p. 43-44).

 
    The PCC appears to have made its decisions on the principle of unanimity, since the documents it agreed upon were intended to bear the signatures of the delegates of each state. This became a problem at an early stage, since Albania boycotted all PCC sessions from 1961 onwards and also because of the Romanian obstructing of the decision-making process of the Pact since the country's initial rift with Moscow in 1964. (Jones, Christopher, p. 133.) It looks as if the other East European countries were likewise at times involved in horse-trading at the PCC for their consent to Russian proposals: economic aid channeled through COMECON was demanded as compensation for having to go along Russian claims (Fodor, p. 46.). Partly because of the Soviet resentment at such uncalled-for developments the powers of this the chief organ of the WTO were in later years severely circumscribed in favor of other, more dynamic bodies.(Jones, Christopher, p. 132-137.).

 
    The role of the Political Consultative Committee was much that of a smokescreen to give the impression of equal rights for the member countries. The former Commander-in Chief of the Warsaw Pact, Soviet Marshal A.A. Grechko stated that "the principle of States €is clearly expressed in the composition, powers and procedures of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty Organization" (Grechko, p. 321). As far as the formal composition was concerned this admittedly was true, but the vague and ultimately only ratifying quality of its powers as well as the obscurity and frequently changed nature of its procedures for reaching decisions does not render this statement much credibility.

 
    The Warsaw Treaty of 1955 gave the PCC authorities the right to create auxiliary organs when needed. At the first session of the Committee in Prague, January 1956, two such additional bodies were set up: the Joint Secretariat and the Permanent Commission. Neither seems to have been functioning well or on a regular basis; curiously enough a PCC communiqué from 1976 actually claimed to have framed a Joint Secretariat the same year with no reference whatsoever to an earlier body by the same name. The Permanent Committee was credited with providing recommendations on a common foreign policy, whereas the Joint Secretariat presumably prepared the agendas for PCC meetings. (Fodor, p. 47.)

 
    The last known political component of the WTO was the Committee of Foreign Ministers (CFM). Though the ministers were known to have met unofficially on summer holidays (not very surprisingly in Crimea, Russia) for several years, the meetings were given formal status only in 1976 with the establishing of the CFM, which had the broadly stated aim of "further perfectioning the mechanisms of political co-operation within the framework of the Treaty". (Maltsev; Organisatsiia Varshavskogo Dogovora, cited in Holden , p. 17.)

 
    As a conclusion, it appears that there was some relaxation of WTO bloc discipline in its political institutions over the years. Strict discipline to be imposed on the junior member states became increasingly undesirable for the Soviets in principle as well as impossible in practice with the reemergence of détente in the early seventies. The raison d'etre of the WTO political organs was that "they provided fora for reaching agreement within a predetermined set of assumptions" (Kaldor, Mary in Smith-Thompson). The set was, of course, predetermined chiefly in Moscow.

 
   

The Military Structures

 
    At the same time as the Warsaw Treaty was parafied, there was also a second document issued announcing the establishment of a Joint Command of the Pact's armed forces which was to be headed by a Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C). In the pursuit of his tasks the C-in-C would be assisted by his deputies, who were the Ministers of Defense of the state-participants to the Treaty.

 
    The right to appointment of the Commander-in-Chief as well as that of the Chief of the Joint Staff was declared to be vested with the PCC; not that it looks like the PCC ever did commission the holders of these posts. From all accounts it appears as if they were rather one-sidedly appointed by the Soviet government, which only ex post facto sought the assent of the partner states. In any case, the posts of C-in-C and of Chief of Staff were never filled by nationals of other states than the Soviet Union during the Pact's existence (Holloway-Sharp (ed.), p. 95.) Interestingly enough the Soviet Generals commissioned to these duties never saw it fit to give up their concurrent postings in the Soviet army; the C- in-C actually served as a Soviet Deputy Minister of Defense on the side. (Szalowski, p. )

 
    The Joint Staff was to be located in Moscow, and the Soviet government was given the right to appoint additional personnel to it for performing its tasks. This in effect meant that the USSR had a virtual monopoly in the supervision of the Staff's day-to-day functioning. Furthermore, all the permanent representatives the Staff stationed in WTO capital cities were Soviet officers enjoying extensive extraterritorial concessions.(ibid., p. ). For the first few years the Joint Staff actually seems to have been an integral part of the Soviet General Staff. At some point it however became an independent element in the Soviet Ministry of Defense. As with so many organizational matters in the WTO, the date of this is somewhat shrouded in clouds but the bet (made i.e by John Erickson) seems to be 1969. Still, the Soviet General Staff continued to have overlapping functions with the WTO Staff, which must have severely restricted its independent, multilateral authorities. This raises serious doubts as to the potential wartime functions of the Staff and thus of the entire Warsaw Pact. Malcolm Mackintosh has pointed out (in Dawesha (ed.), p. 132.) that the WTO Staff appears to have had no access to, neither any commanding authority over any operations, signals, transportation or supply services, each of which naturally is a basic need for the conduct of war. This leads us to question whether the WTO ever even was supposed to have an independent wartime mission. Few of the western writers on the subject think that the C-in-C's peacetime lead of the joint armed forces would have extended to any significant wartime operational command. The traditionally painted picture implies that if war broke out, East European WTO divisions would have been integrated automatically into Soviet forces on East European soil under Soviet supreme lead. The Commander-in- Chief would presumably have been involved in some capacity, but certainly without the kind of pre-eminence his title suggests. (Holden, p. 63.) The Navy or Air defense commands of the Warsaw Pact would hardly have faired much better; according to a widespread view the unimportance of the East European navies submitted them to the Commander-in-Chief Soviet Naval Forces even in time of peace, whereas the entire air defense system was centralized to Moscow at all times.(ibid.). In times of peace the duties of the Staff were fairly clear, though. The by far most essential of these was the managing of troop training, the maneuvers and the military exercises of multilateral forces spanning over multinational territories.(Christopher Jones, p. 140.)

 
    In 1969 there was a major reorganization of the military structures of the Warsaw Pact, in part because of East European criticism concerning the uneven treatment of the member- states in the wake of the Prague spring. The East Europeans, first and foremost hardly surprising the Czechs, explicitly complained that their nationals served as mere liaisons for the Staff, only conveying orders issued by Soviet superiors. As an answer several new bodies that were supposed to enhance the equality of the partners were created. Such were the Committee of Defense Ministers and the Military Council.(Thomas Cason in Clawson- Kaplan, p. 140). Others have argued that these measures in fact were no concessions from Moscow's part, but simply a highly apt means to circumvent the powers vested with the PCC. In the PCC, boycotted as it was by Albania and Romania, unanimity in decisions was required but seldom reached; this was not the case with the new bodies.(see Szalowski, p. 16, Jones, p. 133.).

 
    The Committee of Defense Ministers was to be composed of 9 members; the seven ministers of the state-participants plus the C-in-C and his deputy, the Chief of Staff. The Committee met annually, with its location and Chair rotating. It was specified as a supervising body of the Joint Command of the armies. The Military Council, whose membership rather confusingly appears to have been identical with that of the Joint Command, was in turn supposed to serve as an advisory body to the Committee of Defense Ministers.(Fodor, p. 56-57).

 
    The Soviet last say in the businesses of the military institutions of the WTO was barely disguised. I hope that I have illuminated some of the more blatant feature of this by pointing at the less than clear authorities and subordinations within the formal military ranks of the Pact, the vague proceedings and the heavy yet legalized Soviet preponderance at the uppermost echelons of the WTO command structures.