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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.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many former Warsaw Pact and post-Soviet states sought to join NATO. Poland , Hungary , and the Czech Republic became NATO members in 1999, amid much debate within NATO itself.
To remedy this, in 1950 the US sought to promote the European Defence Community, which would have included a rearmed West Germany. The attempt was dashed when the French Parliament rejected it. On 9 May 1955, West Germany was instead admitted to NATO; the immediate result was the creation of the Warsaw Pact five days later.
On 13 June 1958, in Warsaw, the two countries signed a treaty confirming the border at the line of January 1, 1938 (that is, returning to the situation before the Nazi-imposed Munich Agreement transferred territory from Czechoslovakia to Poland), and since then there have been no conflicts regarding this matter.
In addition, the Dubček leadership called for politico-military changes in the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The leadership affirmed its loyalty to socialism and the Warsaw Pact, but also expressed the desire to improve relations with all countries of the world, regardless of their social systems.
The United States strongly supported Germany's membership in NATO, while the Soviet Union held reservations because it viewed NATO as a threat to Soviet security. It was concerned that NATO's potential to expand eastward by including Germany would weaken the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet military alliance. [1]
Unlike most other NATO members, Canada was initially sympathetic to the Polish proposal. Wary at first that the Plan was a front for greater Warsaw Pact aims, the country began to speak positively about it when it ascertained greater confidence that the venture was born independently in Poland. [24]
When various Warsaw Pact countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989, he declined to intervene militarily. Growing nationalist sentiment within constituent republics threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading the hardliners within the Communist Party to launch an unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev in August 1991.