Warsaw Pact
About the Warsaw Pact
The communist response to West German NATO accession, a collective defense treaty binding Eastern Europe to Moscow. In practice it served Soviet control: Soviet troops crushed Hungary in 1956 and Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress reform, the Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty. It dissolved in 1991 as communism collapsed, its members rushing to join NATO, the alliance built to counter it. Many Russian grievances about NATO expansion center on this reversal.
Related Treaties
ANZUS Treaty
1951Pacific security pact linking the three. New Zealand suspended from the alliance 1986 over its nuclear free policy banning US...
North Atlantic Treaty
1949Created NATO, the collective defense alliance where attack on one is attack on all, Article 5. Anchored the United States in...
Rio Pact
1947Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the hemisphere collective defense, attack on one is attack on all. Invoked...
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
1939Molotov and Ribbentrop signed non-aggression with secret protocols dividing Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia, and Finland into...