Regarding Russia’s current deployment of troops along the borders of Ukraine:
Since the end of World War I, has there ever been, anywhere in the world, a rapid, focused mass buildup of troops comparable in scale to this one… that did not end in war?
Sorry if this is a dumb question. But why did you use WW1 as the cutoff? I would at least propose WW2. And even more specifically maybe after the dissolution of the Warsaw pact. The end of the Warsaw pact had a profound effect on where and why military forces might be deployed for action or bluff going forward.
But I do think it is an interesting question. Very complex to try and sort it compared to current happenings.
There have been a few.
The recurring Operation Reforger exercises were pretty big, and the largest, in 1988, involved 125,000 troops.
Exercise Zapad-81 involved between 100,000 and 150,000 troops.
Operation Brasstacks involved almost 500,000 troops.
But those are exercises. Not current hot spots inciting buildup.
I have written and deleted a few replies to this question… and am still trying to sort out my thoughts on it.
The Soviets sent 500,000 troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to squash the “Prague Spring” liberalization movement.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 the Soviets sent in 12 divisions (along with the five that were already there) to stamp that down. Both those invasions were so effective you couldn’t call them wars. More like “crushing a revolt.”
And while the OP specifically asked about rapid buildups, we shouldn’t forget that something in the neighborhood of two million NATO and Warsaw Pact forces faced each other across the German frontier throughout almost all of the Cold War and somehow managed not to get into a war.
I have been considering the NATO/US situation regarding this question. A few wars have involved NATO/US forces, but the concept of “buildup” is a bit fuzzy. NATO/US having so many bases all over the place, with rapid deployment capabilities so important. But not always on the border of the ensuing conflict. If Russia or any other country moves forces quite directly to a bordering country, it more obviously sets up for immediate engagement. But the wide ranging NATO/US placement makes it so fuzzy.
I considered the Arab forces build up prior to the Arab Israel war as an example of this OP’s thought. But it still seemed a surprise at the time. But that did end in war.
India and Pakistan have had a few tense standoffs in addition to the actual multiple Indo-Pakistani wars. Either near wars that didn’t quite blow or large-scale exercises that triggered defensive measures. As both militaries are quite large and Pakistan additionally has a problem with limited strategic depth on the Indian border, the deployments have at times have involved multiple hundreds of thousands of troops.
The Russian line is that current build-up is also an exercise. And at the time those exercises I cited occurred, those absolutely were “current hot spots.”
It’s true that Reforger 1988 and Zapad-81 were part of a regular series of training exercises, but they were conducted during the Cold War along the Soviet-NATO frontlines. Zapad-81 in particular took place during a particularly tense period of the Cold War.
Brasstacks was probably a closer parallel. It was a massive integrated exercise along the border with Pakistan and near the Pakistani coast. It precipitated a significant crisis in Indian-Pakistani relations, with Pakistan staging counter-mobilizations of conventional forces and putting all of its nuclear weapons on high alert. Those two countries had fought three previous wars, one only 16 years previously, and would fight another limited war 12 years later. This particular mass buildup of troops in peacetime, though, did not lead to a war.
The starting point is subjective, of course. But if we made the time period much narrower, we might omit some relevant examples.
Let me clarify my question, then. I’m asking about a buildup of troops that didn’t end in an invasion or armed conflict.
Holy cow! Great example.
Though worth noting that the motivations of the Indian Army in doing that excercise are unclear, and it’s possible that it was intended to provoke a war.
It’s always been my understanding that Dnepr 67 was the largest Soviet Cold War exercise, but either my google fu is weak or there is a dearth of information about it on the internet. The best I could find was this
~160,000 Soviet troops, Soviet 130 aircraft (including Tu-95MS and Su-34), several Soviet SAM battery, 64 Soviet warships and 6 Chinese warships (plus their crews and support teams, obviously). It was, with the possible exception of the Soviet Exercise Zapad-81 (West-81) (officially 100,000 Soviets and a few thousand Poles), was the largest ever military exercise ever to occur in the Soviet block.
or this DVD box description of a propaganda movie I Serve the Soviet Union who’s numbers I’d take with a huge grain of salt.
An awesome visual account of Operation Dnieper, the 1967 Soviet military exercise which, involving more than half a million troops, stands as the largest such maneuver in world history. Pitting western against eastern forces in a blistering battle over Soviet territory, the maneuver showcased Soviet tank, air and missile capabilities; in Cold War terms, Operation Dnieper was the extravagent Soviet answer to NATO flexible response doctrine, significantly raising the stakes in any future European showdown. Soviet cameras recorded the event as a demonstration of socialist prowess; the version here was adapted by the U.S Department of Defense for internal purposes. The American voice-over offers a comparative evaluation of U.S.-Soviet military capabilities; the remarkable footage–one underwater segment shows tanks equipped with snorkels advancing across the Dnieper river bed–documents Soviet military power at its zenith.
Exercise Brasstacks. It never became an Operation thankfully since Rajiv Gandhi learnt about the existence of Pakistani nuclear weapons and also just how much Gen Sunderjee had misled him.
The Indian General Staff might have had that aim, this is when the Insurgency in the Indian Punjab was at its height.
The Indian Government didn’t.
Thanks. I also quite sloppily referred to Exercise REFORGER as Operation Reforger.
In my defense, though, the Wikipedia article I linked to is actually titled “Operation Brasstacks”, and repeats that name in the body of the text, and other online references I came across also referred to it as “Operation Brasstacks”. I genuinely didn’t know if the Indian Army used the operation/exercise distinction in its terminology, so I used the cite as given.
At least I seem to have managed the correct terminology for Exercise Zapad-81…