defined in a way acceptable to powerful members of the international system.
The court lacks full support, especially from the USA (which indicated its
refusal to participate in 2002), but it is scheduled to come into effective
existence in July 2002. Exactly how powerful a body it will be remains to
be seen. Althoughad hoctribunals have their problems, they are at least well
supported by the states who create them; a permanent court would have to rely
on a longer-term legitimacy, even in situations where it did not have backing
from a few powerful and closely concerned powers. The really important
element in modern war crimes tribunals, whether they bead hocor the
permanent court, is that there must be a guarantee that they will come into
operation after conflicts. The successes of the tribunal dealing with the former
Yugoslavia mean that there is now a possible deterrent effect. Previously trials
like those at Nuremberg were justified largely as retribution, as the making of a
moral point. But if it comes to be expected that losers in any conflict will be
punished for crimes against humanity, international criminal law may come to
function as domestic criminal law is intended.
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was the treaty setting up the Soviet-dominated opposition
grouping toNATO, signed in 1955, and theoretically initiated as a response to
West Germany joining NATO in the same year. The military structure was
known as the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Its membership included most of
theSoviet bloc, though Albania, which had come more and more under
Chinese influence, ceased to participate in 1961 and formally left in 1968, and
both Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried to leave, unsuccessfully, at the times of
their anti-Soviet risings in 1956 and 1968 respectively. The Warsaw Pact set up
a unified military command structure under the control of Moscow, and was
largely armed by the Soviet Union. In practice it was nothing more than an
extension of the Soviet military forces, whereby the Eastern European coun-
tries provided perhaps 20 of the 70 or more divisions stationed in non-Soviet
Eastern Europe. Towards the end of its history (it was formally abolished in July
1991, but had effectively ceased to function after the beginning of the Eastern
European revolutions in 1989) many doubts existed among Western defence
analysts about the reliability of the armies of most members of the Pact.
Furthermore, as the Soviet Union made a practice of always equipping these
forces with less-modern weapons systems, they would have been largely
ineffective even if politically reliable. The only time the Pact actually engaged
in military operations was the crushing of the Czech uprising in 1968. Even
this, however, was mainly a propaganda exercise to demonstrate a spurious East
European solidarity, with the real offensive entirely carried out by troops from
Warsaw Pact