Empirical Estimates of 'Reliability' in the Warsaw Pact

Perhaps the most important was the effort by Ivan Yolgyes and Dale Herspring , 'Political Reliability in the Eastern European Warsaw Pact Armies', Armed Forces and Society (Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1980), pp. 270-296.

A popularised version of one scenario was on The New York Times bestseller list for many months: General Sir John Hackett , et, al., The Third World War (London: Macmillan, 1979 ). In it, domestic unrest in Eastern Europe is a significant factor in the NATO 'victory' after a WTO-initiated 'invasion' of Central Europe.

Ross Johnson , Robert Dean and Alex Alexiev , East European Militarty Establishments: The Warsaw Pact Northern Tier (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1980), R-2417/1-AF/FF p. vii.

R.F. Staar writes that 'Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania are not powerful and not particularly reliable' See his Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 3rd ed. (Stanford, CA : Hoover Institution Press, 1977 ), p. 238. Ross Johnson refers to Eastern Europe as a 'military asset' on which Soviet 'reliance' has been further increased. See his 'Soviet-East European Military Relations', in Dale Hersping and Ivan Volgyes (eds.), Civil-Militaty Relations in Communist Systems (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), p. 262. Another assessment refers to the 'often questionable reliability of individual Warsaw Pact members ...' and the 'uneasy' domination of Moscow in the WTO. See Richard E. Darilek , 'Organization versus Alliance: The Warsaw Pact in Retrospect and Prospect', Parameters (Vol. 8, No. 2, June 1978), p. 78.

Put another way, reliability (R) can be regarded as the difference between force availability (fa) and 1.00 minus mobilisation potential (mp) expressed as a proportion, or R=fa-(1.00-mp). Thus, as mobilisation potential (always less than 1.00) decreases, a larger component is subtracted from force availability, thereby reducing reliability, Were mp=0, then force availability would be cancelled out, and such military units would be wholly unreliable.

Condoleeza Rice , 'The Czechoslovak People's Army (CLA)', in D. Nelson (ed.), Soviet Allies (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 126.

Christopher D. Jones , Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1982) makes such an argument, especially pp. 83-93.

John Erickson , 'The Ground Forces in Soviet Military Policy ', Strategic Review (No. 6, Winter 1978), p. 76.

Ivan Volgyes , The Political Reliability of the Warsaw Pact Armies ( Burnham, NC: Duke University Press, 1982), pp. 24-40.

John Erickson , op. cit

A few examples of such studies available to the public over the past decade are John F. Meehan , 'Soviet Maneuvers: Summer 1971', Military Review (April 1972), pp. 14-21; Thomas Salisbury , 'Kavkaz-76 ', Military Review (June 1977), pp. 47-55 and several by Graham Turbiville such as his 'Warsaw Pact Exercise Shield-72', Military Review (July 1973), pp. 17-24; 'Warsaw Pact Amphib. Ops. in Northern Europe', Marine Corps Gazette (October 1976), pp. 20-27 and 'Soviet Bloc Maneuvers', Military Review (August 1978), pp. 19-35. Such standard reference works as John Erickson , Soviet Military Power ( London: Royal United Services Institute, 1970) also discuss WTO and Soviet exercises of the 1960s. Christopher D. Jones, op. cit., provides the most up-to-date summary of WTO joint manoeuvres. See pp. 301-309.

Daniel N. Nelson , 'Recognizing Complexity: A Case For A Policy of Differentiation Among Communist Systems', Southeastern Europe (forthcoming, Winter 1985) discusses the Rumanian deviation in the context of diversity within the Warsaw Pact.

There are, of course, statistical measures for association across cases ranked on different variables. See, for example, Sidney Siegal , Nonparametric Statistics (New York: McGraw Hill , 1956), pp. 229-232 for a discussion of Kendall's W and its calculation.

Ronald Linden , Bears and Foxes (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1979).

Radio Free Europe, East European- Area Audience and Opinion Research , 'Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Polish Attitudes Toward a "Serious Conflict" Between the United States and the Soviet Union ' (December 1981). The question asked was, 'If a serious conflict should develop between the US and the Soviet Union, would your sympathies lie with the United States, with the Soviet Union or with neither?' Data was collected in 1979 and 1980 via interviews with 4,878 travellers from these countries to the West.

George R. Feiwel , 'Industrialization', in Stephen Fischer-Galati (ed.), Eastern Europe in the 1980s (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), p. 61.

Osrodek Badania Opinii Publicznej , 'Summary of Results' (Poll No. 16), p. 3.

Daniel N. Nelson , 'Socio-economic and Political Change in Communist Europe'. International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 21, No. 2, June 1977), p. 359-388.

Trond Gilberg , 'The Political Order', in Stephan Fischer-Galati , op. cit, p. 125.

William A, Welsh , 'Summary and Conclusions' in William A. Welsh (ed.), Survey Research and Public Altitudes (New York: Pergamon . 1981), p. 492.

Kenneth M, Coleman and Daniel N. Nelson , 'Stale Socialism, State Capitalism and the Politicization of Workers'. The Carl Beck Papers , No. 304 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984).

Daniel N. Nelson , 'Public Opinion and Public Policy in Communist Systems', paper presented at the APSA Annual Meeting , New York (August 1981).

Dale Herspring , 'Technology and Civil-Military Relations: The Polish and East German Cases', in Dale Hersping and Ivan Volgyes (cds.). op. cit, p. 124.

Ibid, pp. 132-133.

Christopher D. Jones , op. cit, p. 219.

Ibid.

Data regarding NATO members' defence expenditures and other comparisons can be found in ACDA, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers: 1970-1979 (Washington, DC: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1982), pp. 48-84.

The Military Balance 1980-81 (London: IISS, 1981), pp. 15-17.

Author's calculations based on data reported by Thomas O. Cason, 'The Warsaw Pact Today: The East European Military Forces', in Robert W. Clawson and Lawrence S. Kaplan (eds.), The Warsaw Pact (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1982), Pp. 137-162.

Author's calculations from data reported by Thomas O. Cason. op. cit.