‘Like-minded and like-acting.’ Central Europe, the West, and the overlooked factor of the Warsaw Pact’s demise

The article analyses the disintegration of the Warsaw Treaty Organization in the early 1990s in the context of the emerging post-Cold War order. Based on extensive archival research, the main focus is on the dynamics of relations between the main proponents of the alliance’s dissolution – the new non-communist leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland – and the West, especially the United States. The main argument is that as a part of their adaptation strategy, the three Central European countries used the Warsaw Pact mechanisms to control Soviet foreign and security policy. As a result, the alliance lost its importance to Moscow.