The hardliners' best proposed outcome is neutrality among former Warsaw Pact allies and enough support inside the Soviet republics to present the conflict as a common defensive war. The more damaging scenario has former allies fighting Soviet garrisons and Soviet military units becoming loyal to emerging independent states. Suppressing those movements would consume the forces intended for a war against NATO. A figure of roughly 50,000 Soviet personnel in Poland, including aviation units, is then qualified as a force estimate already reduced by 1991. Nuclear weapons stationed there would create an additional obligation to defend their sites. Large Soviet garrisons would therefore make the breakup dangerous without necessarily making a coherent external campaign possible.
Notable Point · 43:25-47:50
Soviet garrisons in a war of political disintegration
Troops stationed across Eastern Europe could become trapped in local conflicts while Moscow tried to preserve control of its allies and republics.