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The Warsaw Pact (WP), [d] formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), [e] was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War.
During the Cold War, most of Europe was divided between two alliances. Members of NATO are shown in blue, with members of the Warsaw Pact in red and unaffiliated countries are in grey. Yugoslavia, although communist, had left the Soviet sphere in 1948, and Albania was a Warsaw Pact member-only until 1968.
West Germany joined NATO in 1955, which led to the formation of the rival Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. The North Atlantic Treaty was largely dormant until the Korean War initiated the establishment of NATO to implement it with an integrated military structure.
In May 1955, West Germany joined NATO, which was one of the conditions agreed to as part of the end of the country's occupation by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own collective security alliance (commonly called the Warsaw Pact) later that month.
As such, the bloc was opposed to the political systems and foreign policies of communist countries, which were centered on the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and usually the People's Republic of China. The name "Western Bloc" emerged in response to and as the antithesis of its communist counterpart, the Eastern Bloc.
The Warsaw Pact's response to NATO's position was that each side should reduce its forces proportionally rather than absolutely and that equipment and troop numbers should be reduced. Each side should cut their forces by 20,000; A subsequent 15 per cent manpower and equipment reduction in manpower by every country in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. [3]
Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member states. Three more members joined between 1952 and 1955, and a fourth joined in 1982. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has added 16 more members from 1999 to 2024. [1]
The negotiating arrangements became clearer during the spring of 1970. The Warsaw Pact stressed the persistence of the borders resulting from the Second World War, the abstention of violence and the improvement of commercial-technical links, while NATO's main focus was on mutually subtracting forces. There were differences in the emphases, but ...