ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, in March 1995, the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies co-sponsored, jointly with the National Endowment for Democracy, a “ground-breaking” conference on “Civil-Military Relations and the Consolidation of Democracy.” The main goal of the conference was to offer an informed answer to the stringent policy questions on “who should guard the guards” of the former communist countries, what would be the role of the military in the post-Cold-War era, and what patterns of civil-military relations should be implemented. Samuel P. Huntington, one of the “founding fathers” of civil-military relations theory, was invited as a keynote speaker to the conference. He presented a rather optimistic view on the chances of success for building healthy democratic civil-military relations in Eastern Europe, considering the lessons learned from “the third wave” of democratization in Latin America and South Europe (Huntington, 1995: 17). The main factors, identified by Huntington, as guarantors of a successful transition were related to the growing acceptance of the norms of military professionalism and civilian control, the interest of both military and civilians for such control, and the low political and social cost comparative with high benefits for society.
