Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The stakes of power
- Part I The instruments of power
- Part II Below the threshold
- 4 Soviet theater forces on a descending path
- 5 Protection from one's friends: the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact
- 6 Red Star of the sea: the Soviet Navy and strategic policy
- Part III Managing the mission
- Index
5 - Protection from one's friends: the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The stakes of power
- Part I The instruments of power
- Part II Below the threshold
- 4 Soviet theater forces on a descending path
- 5 Protection from one's friends: the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact
- 6 Red Star of the sea: the Soviet Navy and strategic policy
- Part III Managing the mission
- Index
Summary
The Warsaw Pact ended in July 1991. Nineteen months earlier in the city of Warsaw itself, however, the Pact had actually surrendered to the peoples of Eastern Europe. The Polish foreign minister, Krzyztof Skubiszewski, accepted the surrender on behalf of the Solidarity government formed in late August. Skubiszewski, the first non-communist foreign minister in Eastern Europe since 1948, acknowledged the capitulation of the Soviet alliance system by signing a communique of the Committee of Foreign Ministers of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). The communique stated:
despite all the ambiguities of the situation, the conditions in Europe have ripened for a radical turning point in relations among the countries of the continent and for a gradual overcoming of its divisions and for a final eradication of the Cold War.
One of the basic conditions for the construction of a secure, peaceful, undivided Europe is recognition of the rights of each nation to independent determination of its fate, to the free choice of the path of its social, political and economic development without interference from outside.
The Warsaw Pact statement followed by one day a declaration by the Soviet government that it had renounced its claim to a right of military intervention in Eastern Europe. The Soviet renunciation of the “Brezhnev doctrine” came in a joint Finnish–Soviet statement of October 26, 1989 which in effect announced the “Finlandization” of Eastern Europe. In a joint statement on Europe, both signatories pledged
Unconditional respect for the principle of the freedom of socio-political choice, the de-ideolization and humanization of international relations, the subordination of all foreign policy activities to international law, and the supremacy of all-human interests and values.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking , pp. 100 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991