ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the reorientation of Czech and Slovak security policies as defined in the traditional military sense: defense policy. The Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe began to reformulate its consensual procedures in a format described as "consensus minus one" to allow at least for a discussion of security crises even when the member or members involved refused to welcome outside consideration. As of January 1995 it became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-in recognition of its gradual evolution from a floating conference to a more structured institution. Advisers in the Czech Institute for International Relations particularly stressed this factor, arguing that the alternative was a German-based security concept that might reduce Central Europe to a German sphere of influence. Czechoslovakia, while nervous in the face of the dislocations of the Soviet collapse, was not concerned with any short-term Soviet effort to reconquer its lost East European empire.
