The Road from Visegrad: Cooperation and Security in East Central Europe.

The new democracies of Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland have been at the forefront of integration into West European intergovernmental organizations since the fall of communism. Cooperation among Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland began in the post-communist era at the 1991 summit in Visegrad, Hungary. Although states in the West encouraged cooperation, particularly as a condition for membership in the EU and NATO, national security priorities of the Visegrad states diverge due to historical experiences and geostrategic location. The three states share a common insecurity from being positioned throughout history between great powers that have pursued expansionist policies from time to time. Although the foreign policy agenda of Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland have been quite similar since the fall of communism, each state maintains different policy priorities and different traditional perceptions of external threats. Moreover, the three states have experienced varying degrees of security anxiety from the end of the bipolar system. The breakup of the USSR, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the velvet divorce of the Czech and Slovak republics have had direct implications on security, trade, and foreign relations for each state. In neighboring East European states, military bases that once housed Soviet troops are currently being offered to the hegemonic power of the U.S. for troop redeployment consideration, and the U.S. military already has a presence as a NATO force on the Taszar air base in Hungary. This paper will examine the security postures of Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland since the Visegrad Summit in 1991. What are the competing exogenous pressures that affect the security policies of Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland? To what degree does cooperation impinge upon the security priorities and the sovereignty of Central European states? Can these states achieve relative gains vis-a-vis neighboring states and increase their influence with competing regional powers, or can shared norms and values from regional cooperation increase absolute gains and increase regional stability? In order to evaluate the security concerns, collective security, neoliberal institutionalism, and realism will be introduced as frameworks of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]