The Confrontation of Conventional Forces in the Context of Ensuring Strategic Stability

Abstract

In May 1987, at the Berlin Conference the Political Consultative Committee adopted the document entitled, ‘On the Military Doctrine of the Warsaw Pact Member States’. The principal substance and orientation of this military doctrine are those of preventing both nuclear and conventional war, and safeguarding and defending socialist countries from outside encroachments. The cutting edge of the Warsaw Pact doctrine is directed not at preparing for war, but against war and at consolidating the principles of international security. It is the first time a provision on the prevention of war has been included in a definition of the Warsaw Pact’s military doctrine in such a pointed manner. The Warsaw Pact’s military activity envisaged a struggle to prevent war in the past, too, but this task has now moved to the fore in the doctrine, and has become the main and definitive task.1