E. Bloc Reforms Undermining Military Pact : NEWS ANALYSIS

As street demonstrations mounted in East Germany last month, Erich Honecker, then the East German party boss, ordered the Communist Party’s “workers’ militia” and interior security troops to be ready to forcibly break up a march scheduled for Leipzig on Oct. 8.

Stunningly, word came back that neither the militia, nor the security troops, nor probably even the East German army would obey orders from the Communist Party to crush the demonstrators.

“One step away from the use of force,” as one source put it, Honecker was overruled by the Politburo, and his ouster followed days later.

The account, which is given wide credibility here, demonstrates that the military and security forces of the Warsaw Pact have fallen victim to the same pressures that are causing political upheaval throughout Eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact, which consists of the Soviet Union and six Eastern European nations, has become a “hollow” alliance, according to U.S. officials and other experts. Neither Moscow nor the Communist parties in its client states now can order the armies or other security forces of Eastern Europe into action with the assurance that the troops will comply.

“The pact exists in name only,” said Rozanne L. Ridgway, former U.S. ambassador to East Germany and assistant secretary of state for Europe. She now heads the private Atlantic Council.

The revolution in the East is having repercussions in the West. As the loyalties of East Bloc armies shift from the Communist Party to national governments, the possibility of a Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe is falling fast.

The United States is contemplating substantial troop reductions in West Germany in response not only to the waning threat from the East but also to budgetary pressures at home. West Germany is reported planning to cut its troops 15% in anticipation that U.S. and Soviet negotiators will reach agreement on an arms treaty that will include a reduction of that magnitude.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is searching for a new reason for being. U.S. policy-makers are calling for a greater political role for NATO as its military role declines.

Signs are everywhere that the loyalties of East Bloc military forces are shifting from the Communist Party to the national governments, which are increasingly turning away from the party:

-- In Poland, the non-Communist, Solidarity-led government is seeking to end an agreement that allows the Soviets to order Polish troops into action. Communist Party members still head the defense and security ministries, but no one believes that Polish forces would obey them if they relayed Moscow’s commands.

-- In Hungary, party cells within the army have been abolished and the new Parliament has decreed that troops cannot be sent abroad--as they were in 1968, when ordered by the Soviets to help invade Czechoslovakia--without Parliament’s permission. Some experts would not be surprised if Hungary left the pact within a year to become a neutral country.

-- The Romanian army has not participated in exercises with Warsaw Pact forces since 1964, although its hard-line leadership ironically voices the staunchest support for the pact these days.

-- The East German officer corps may still be loyal to the party, but the enlisted personnel probably are not. The situation is certain to worsen as East Germany comes to identify more closely with West German than with Soviet interests.

-- Even in the Soviet Union, the army cannot be ordered solely by the Politburo to go into action. Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov has said that he cannot commit his troops without approval of the new Supreme Soviet, as the Parliament is known.

“The Warsaw Pact is over,” said Ivan Volgyes of the University of Nebraska, a specialist in East European military affairs. “The Soviets are looking for a decent way to withdraw from East Europe without humiliation.”

During the past tumultuous week in East Germany, a crowd reportedly gathered outside a Soviet army base in that country. It was the only demonstration during the period that was broken up, according to one source. No further details were available.

But the incident suggests that the 350,000 Soviet troops in East Germany could become the focus of provocations or unacceptable derision.

“Those troops are out there by themselves where they can’t count on even supporting roles from the East German and Polish armies,” said Ronald Asmus, an analyst at Santa Monica’s RAND Corp. In his view, the Soviet general staff should be giving serious consideration to withdrawing most of them to Byelorussia, inside Soviet borders.

“Soviet marshals looking at the situation must be having ulcers,” Asmus said. “But we’re seeing almost nothing of this anxiety in the Soviet press, despite all this glasnost. It’s as if they are walking on eggs about the issue. I think the debate is being muzzled by (Soviet President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev.”

The Soviet army has also lost much of the coercive mission that has kept it in Eastern Europe for 40 years. Consequently, many government and private experts speculate that Gorbachev might announce a cut in Soviet troops in East Germany when he meets with President Bush on Dec. 2 and 3.

“He might decide to preempt being ejected from East Germany by proposing a dramatic deal, cutting down maybe to one-fourth the present troop level either unilaterally or on condition of some reciprocal U.S. and West German drawdown of forces,” said A. Ross Johnson, a former CIA official now at Radio Free Europe.

Such an offer, however, would overtake the negotiations now under way in Vienna to reduce force levels in both sides of Europe. The present goal of both sides is that the Soviets would cut their troops and tanks by more than half, while NATO would cut 15% to reach equal levels.

Besides, Gorbachev may not wish events to proceed so fast. For all the centrifugal forces within Eastern Europe, there are reasons to keep the Warsaw Pact from collapsing.

“The Soviets have not changed their determination to keep Germany divided,” a senior State Department official pointed out. Soviet troops will remain in East Germany for another five years, the official predicted, although they should be out of Hungary and at greatly reduced strength elsewhere in the region.

“East Europeans are not in a hurry to get out of the Warsaw Pact,” the official added. “There’s no other structure to contain their ethnic and national rivalries, and it’s a necessary lip service to Moscow, which allows the East Europeans freedom to go down their own political and economic roads.”

To preserve a role for the pact, the Soviets are seeking to build up its political role even as its military might diminishes, just as some U.S. officials are trying to do with NATO. But some experts do not given the Soviets much chance at success.

“I’ve seen some of the ideas they are circulating,” Ridgway said, “and they look copied out of NATO handbooks--more political consultation, council meetings and so on. That won’t work. They don’t seem to have any new ideas.”

Moscow also has been seeking to strengthen its bilateral military arrangements with individual members of the Warsaw Pact, concentrating on those nations of particular importance to its security, such as Poland, rather than all pact members.

For its part, Poland might welcome “a clear and strong prolongation of the security alliance with the Soviets,” one U.S. expert on Eastern Europe said. The alternative, he said, might be to become the object of a political rivalry between Western Europe and the Soviet Union, as it was before two world wars.

In the West, NATO is already changing course as the Soviet political and military threat recedes. For example, prospects for developing a new short-range nuclear missile for deployment in West Germany, the topic of rancorous exchanges at NATO’s May summit meeting, are now virtually zero.