LARRY L. WATTS continua dialogul inceput la Grupul Prospectiv

Domnul Larry Watts ne-a trimis urmatorul mesaj, in continuarea discutiei noastre inceputa la Grupul Prospectiv pe facebook.  Discutia initiala este disponibila aici si aici.

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First off, let me say that the discussion I have read on your blog has been admirable, with very many points well worth discussion. I hope to address many of them. For now, however, there are a few points that I would like to clarify and considerations I would like to introduce (although some of them have already been raised by your readers in other contexts.) My statement, “In mid-1965 Romania was ‘abruptly’ dropped from Warsaw Pact war planning altogether,”     is made on the basis of a Parallel History Project Hungarian study on Soviet war planning.  Since this was a measure undertaken without informing the Romanians, one would require additional evidence from Soviet or other loyalist member sources to falsify it. Evidence of Romania’s continued participation in map exercises regarding defensive operations, as you rightly point out, does not negate its exclusion from offensive war planning. There are several issues involved here. First, Romania’s exclusion from offensive war planning, the evidence for which I cited Imre Okvath, the former head of the Analysis Department in Hungary’s Office of History and current chief of the Main Department of Science at the Historical Archive of the State Security in Hungary. According to Dr. Okvath’s study of Warsaw Pact war planning (at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_wargame/introduction_okvath.cfm?navinfo=16606):

“Interestingly, until 1965 the Hungarian 5th army was expected to work in close cooperation with the Romanian 3rd army in all military manoeuvers and operational plans; afterward, the Romanian armed forces abruptly disappeared from the scene. This abrupt change in Warsaw Pact military planning can be explained by the emergence of a new political line followed by the Romanian leadership now headed by Nicolae Ceauşescu. This was aimed at fostering the idea of national sovereignty within the alliance and trying to gain national control over nuclear weapons, while at the same time the new leadership declared the policy of working for the elimination of the two opposing military blocs. Since none of these ideas were welcomed by the Soviets at the time, this resulted in a special treatment of the Romanian armed forces as far as military planning was concerned from this time on.”

Any evidence from Romanian sources – military or otherwise – is of the wrong sort to falsify this. One would require more compelling evidence from the other Pact members at the time (for example, from the Soviet-era, Polish, East German or Czech or Slovak archives) or contrary evidence from the Hungarian archives.

Verification of Romania’s lack of serious military cooperation from Romanian archival sources, other Pact – including Soviet - sources, and from American sources during 1964-1966 is plentiful.  It was even plastered on the front page of the New York Times (e.g. December 19, 1964; May 14-18 and 22, 1966). And it was far worse than mere “lack of cooperation,” it had become an active effort to constrain the USSR’s unilateral use of the military force of the Warsaw Pact. As I note in the book, in July 1965 Ceausescu told Deng Xiaopeng that Romania “intended to do away with” Soviet control of the national armies in the Warsaw Pact (see the document in the collection by Dennis Deletant, Mihail Ionescu and Anna Locher at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=16325&navinfo=15342).

A month earlier, in June 1965, Sherman Kent, the chief analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the head of its Office of National Estimates from 1953 until 1968, captured Romanian thinking and the dilemma it posed for Moscow with extraordinary insight. This document was not available to me when I wrote With Friends Like These/Fereste-ma, Doamne, de prieten, so, with your indulgence, I append some sections of it here (the paper, which was for CIA internal distribution only, is titled “Staff Memorandum No. 24-65: Rumania and the Warsaw Pact, 25 June 1965” is available at http://www.foia.cia.gov/document/5166d4f899326091c6a606e3.)

“Certainly the evidence suggests that Bucharest would at least like to leave the Pact, and certainly, if it should do so, the repercussions would transcend the purely local… [T]hey almost certainly view the Pact as another Soviet device for insuring Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe and as another instrument for bringing pressure to bear on the member states. …

Moscow’s ability to alter the Rumanian attitude is probably quite limited. Should Bucharest reduce its participation in the Pact to a purely formal level, refuse to participate in Pact exercises and make only a minimal contribution to Pact forces, Moscow would either have to tacitly acknowledge Rumania’s sovereign right to do so, change its plans for the Pact as a whole (as in fact it did for the CMEA when faced with comparable Rumanian opposition), or seek somehow to compel the Rumanians to acquiesce in Soviet plans.

The latter would be most difficult to accomplish. The Soviets almost certainly do not possess sufficient assets within the Rumanian party to overthrow the present regime. Nor do they possess a throttlehold on the Rumanian economy. Bucharest is probably in a better position to resist Soviet economic pressures than either China or Yugoslavia were; in any case, a Soviet boycott would almost certainly turn the Rumanians toward the West for help. A withdrawal of Soviet military aid would probably have the same effect. A Soviet bribe, such as a major economic aid program, would also be unlikely to work. The Rumanian leaders are not the sort who would be likely to barter their independence, even were they in great need of outside economic assistance. …

[T]here is one very telling reason why the Soviets might actually use force in the event that Romania was, in effect, defecting from the camp (by withdrawing from the Pact or in some other way): to preserve their empire, not only in Rumania but throughout Eastern Europe. A failure to intervene would signal to the other Eastern European states and, indeed, to the world at large, that the USSR had either deliberately decided to let the empire break up or that it was powerless to prevent it. …

The nature of the general Soviet dilemma is most clear in this context. An invasion of Rumania is most clear in this context. An invasion of Rumania would in many respects damage Soviet interests throughout the area and would carry with it at least the risk of trouble elsewhere in the Bloc.”

Romania did indeed think about leaving the alliance from 1964 on-and-off until the end of the 1960s/beginning of the 1970s. However, the central question – “Will it improve the security situation of Romania?” – could never be answered positively. NATO never offered it an alternative and was quite explicit on the impossibility of such a consideration (regardless of the fact that Bucharest actually concluded a friendship and assistance alliance with NATO member Portugal in the mid-1970s; a unique occurrence in the Warsaw Pact). Had Romania left the Pact it would have remained in the same geographic space with the same three Warsaw Pact members encircling it, only, instead of being allies – even if purely pro forma – they would be open adversaries. And, instead of the limited access to information and planning that membership afforded it, Romania would be completely blind and deaf to the inner workings of their alliance. 

Thus, Bucharest decided to remain in the Pact, but on ROMANIAN rather than SOVIET terms. Bodnaras clearly stated this to U.S. Ambassador Harry Barnes in March 1974, as I note in my book. The Soviet interest in keeping Romania a member of the alliance was also paramount, surmounting even public challenges to Soviet authority and active obstruction of its foreign and security policies and even military operations (for example, in the Middle East). Participation in Pact exercises that didn’t contravene Romanian policy – i.e. non-offensive operations – was one way in which Romania ‘proved’ its on-going membership. Another was participation in Pact and Soviet-sponsored meetings, although often the participation in non-Pact and especially ideological meetings was only pro forma, the Romanian delegation would often leave after the opening ceremony. Moscow, in contrast, would seek to portray them as enthusiastic participants.

How did Romania’s de facto withdrawal while remaining a member of the Pact play out with the Soviet Union, and especially the Soviet military? There are a variety of sources on this, ranging from the State Department and CIA reports of 1964/1965 to the memoirs of Soviet military officers. First off, it is useful to disembarrass ourselves of the twin myths that Romania never considered leaving the Warsaw Pact and that the Soviet Union would not have been bothered had they done so. However, even if the communist regime in Romania had been fully committed to the alliance throughout the Cold War, it would have mattered not at all if Moscow believed it was contemplating departure, especially if Moscow assessed such a departure as seriously undermining Soviet security. In interstate relations, as in politics everywhere, perception is everything. (To quote Marx “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” – that’s Groucho Marx, by the way).

Romanian military interest in leaving the alliance appears in CIA and State Department reporting from November 1964 and in reporting from within the Pact that summer, including Khrushchev’s declaration to Czechoslovak Party leader Novotny that “The Balkans would become uncontrollable if Romania moved into the anti-Soviet camp. [We must] stop Romania leaving the Pact.” [Jan Sejna, We Will Bury You). We have the Polish transcript of the Pact’s Budapest meeting – plus Yugoslavia and minus Romania – in June 1967 where Brezhnev stated, after Romania refused its territory and airspace for the transport of Soviet and Warsaw Pact military assistance to its client states during the 6-Day War, that  “everything indicates they intend to break relations with our camp” and announce their “departure from the Warsaw Pact.” (Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113622.) We have Soviet Defense Minister Grechko stating to the Politburo that Romania is seriously considering “full withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact” and that the Pact “could not withstand this loss.” (Czech archive document cited in Matthew Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Policy)

To my mind, the clearest expression of actual Soviet-Romanian military relations is that given by the former chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact, General Anatoly Gribkov, in his 1998 memoir. Again, unfortunately, I was unaware of its existence at the time I published With Friends Like These, so this is not included in that volume. It is, however, well worth considering:

“The Romanians were concerned they would share the fate of Czechoslovakia. So they adopted a doctrine of “defense of the entire people.” Gradually and secretly they redeployed their troops. The best-equipped and most combat capable divisions were deployed close to the Soviet border and to the Iron Gates, and close to the border with Bulgaria. Later the Hungarian front was strengthened – the contested territory of Transylvania. They deployed anti-aircraft batteries with combat charges, at all airports, including the capital, for destruction of aircraft and airborne troops. The Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Staff of the Warsaw Pact Armed Forces did not have the right to land at Romanian airports or to fly across its territory to Bulgaria without written permission from the Romanian authorities. When a [Soviet] aircraft approached Romania - it was as if it was about to be put under enemy fire. All of Romanian became an armed camp. In technical schools and standard schools students in the higher grades intensively studies military affairs. There as no fulfillment of operational plans worked out previously and no fulfillment of plans for the event of a NATO attack—although this was plainly necessary. Fundamental changes were introduced into the plans for the purchasing of armament; the Romanians only procured basically defensive systems for anti-aircraft, for interceptor aircraft, communications equipment and anti-tank weapons.”