No Warsaw Pact

What if the Warsaw Pact was never signed? Assume that NATO is still in existence.

Perhaps the Soviets propagandize that they only need an economic union like COMECON, whereas NATO makes Western Europe American vassals?

EDIT: I did not realize this would be that difficult. No Warsaw Pact or any other military alliance of similar strength or composition.
 
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Tovarich

Banned
A string of bilateral defence agreements between Moscow and each individual occupied country of Eastern Europe?

I wondered about that, but wasn't part of the control of Eastern Europe achieved by having troops from countries with traditional/long-standing enmity stationed on each others' turf?
 
Originally posted by Tovarich
I wondered about that, but wasn't part of the control of Eastern Europe achieved by having troops from countries with traditional/long-standing enmity stationed on each others' turf?

Nope. I never heard about Polish troops stationed in GDR or Romanian troops in Hungary (or vice versa). Sometimes they conducted a joint exercise in one of the WP countries, but that is all. From Polish perspective the only exception was intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. AFAIK the only WP army which had permanent bases in other WP countries was the Soviet Army.
However, WP HQ (i.e. Soviets) could threaten some rebellious country with joint WP military intervention. In 1980 Poles seriously worried about Soviet-East German-Czechoslovakian intervention against "Solidarity". OTOH, without WP there would be no permanent command structure allowing for such an operation.
WP was pretty much a must. USSR wanted all its allies/satelites/puppets in a unified structure under one centralized command. Theirs.
 
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