Immediately after the revolutions of 1989-1990, Central Europeans announced their desire to "return to Europe." In policy terms this meant that Central Europeans wanted to join the European Union (EU) and NATO. NATO's initial response was to extend its "hand of friendship" at the London Summit in July 1990 and to establish the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) at the Rome Summit in November 1991. As 1992 opened, not only did the former Soviet Union (and Yugoslavia) disintegrate, but after the June 1992 Czech and Slovak Federated Republic (CSFR) elections, Czech and Slovak leaders decided to conclude a "Velvet Divorce" on 1 January 1993. Despite the fact that the majority of Czechs and Slovaks in both regions opposed separation, no referendum was convened. Since 1993, both CSFR successor states-the Czech Republic and Slovakia-have continued to pursue EU and NATO membership. After the January 1994 Brussels Summit announced Partnership For Peace (PFP), Slovakia became one of the more active of the 27 Partners in the program. In September 1995 Slovakia was briefed by NATO on The Study on NATO Enlargement. When the December 1995 North Atlantic Council (NAC) session invited those Partners interested in NATO membership to engage in enhanced 16+1 dialogues, Slovakia responded affirmatively-participating in three rounds of discussions during 1996-concluding that it wanted to join NATO.

This is the second of three books by Jeffrey Simon on emerging post-communist countries to recently join NATO. As with the previous volume (Hungary), this book represents a tremendous amount of first hand research grounded in primary source material and personal interviews with key civil and military leaders. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.

Following the passage of the fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries of the entry of many former communist states into both NATO and the EU in 2019, this book takes a comprehensive look at the changed security conditions of these new member states. How has NATO and EU membership improved their overall defence protection, and what elements are still missing for them on an individual state basis? Utilising alliance politics theory, convergence/divergence theory and defence policy theory, the book provides an invaluable assessment of defence policies, from the stable East Central European states to the most jeopardised Baltic states in the north of Europe. With chapters on the Cold War defence conditions during the last two decades of Soviet domination, post 1989–91 transformations in the direction of democracy and the impact of the 2014 Ukraine–Russia–Crimea crisis, this book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the changed landscape of European politics in the twenty-first century.

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia. The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

This major comparative study examines the development of military-society relations in central and eastern Europe since the collapse of communism. Soldiers and Societies in Post-Communist Europe explores how the interaction of the common challenges of postcommunism and the diverse circumstances of individual countries are shaping patterns of military-society relations in this changing region. Detailed country case studies, written by international experts to a common analytical framework, compare the experiences of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia and Ukraine.