ABSTRACT

Caught between lingering threats from the East and the uncertain welcome mat to the West, the Central and East European countries find themselves in an all too familiar security vacuum. This chapter examines the interplay of domestic and external events in these countries as they try to fill that void. It focuses on the four core Central European states--the so-called Visegrad group made up of Poland, Hungary, and the independent Czech and Slovak Republics-with the period between late 1989 and early 1994 being broken down into four overlapping but distinct phases corresponding, albeit imperfectly, to the calendar years 1990-1993. A final asymmetry--this one political--stemmed ironically from the April 1989 "Round table Agreement" that eventually led to the installation of the first non-communist government in Central and Eastern Europe in more than 40 years. Despite its ostensibly apolitical character--and especially as the Cold War waned--membership in the group became a vehicle for Hungary's policy of "stealth neutrality."