What did the Soviet Union do in response to NATO?
1 Answer
The Soviets created the Warsaw Pact, ostensibly as a 'defensive alliance', as a propaganda exercise in response to the creation of NATO.
Explanation:
In the last year of the Second World War, Stalin shifted gears on his war aims. While the defeat of Nazi Germany remained his foremost objective, he also took the opportunity to expand the territory of the Soviet Union and create a series of client states out of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria; he was less successful in bringing Yugoslavia and Albania into his fold.
With the end of the Second World War, the Western Allies rapidly disbanded their armies, restoring as many men as they could back to their civilian lives. By contrast, the USSR left large garrisons in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, leaving hundreds of thousands of men in uniform. They also reneged on their wartime agreements and established puppet governments in these countries.
Alarmed by this behaviour, a number of nations formed NATO as a defensive alliance in 1949. The next year, arguably as a test of Western resolve, the Soviets allowed Kim il Jung to start an aggressive war in Korea. In the main, however, the Soviets did little until NATO allowed West German to rearm and join NATO. As a result, the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact -- compelling their client states to "join" a "defensive" alliance allegedly in response to the new NATO threat.
The continuing exodus of East Germans and Hungarians (after their 1956 rebellion against the Soviets was crushed) was also embarassing to the Soviets. The Berlin Wall was erected to keep people trapped inside the Soviet Bloc.
In the end, the USSR's massive military expenditures lead directly to the financial collapse of the Soviet empire. After 1991, it says much that every one of the Warsaw Pact nations (as well as several Soviet socialist republics) immediately sought to join NATO as quickly as they could.
