The new democratic systems of Central European Countries -Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary-were born between 1989 and 1990. Each countries faced two challenges. One was to create the liberal political system and market economy. The other was new sys...
The new democratic systems of Central European Countries -Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary-were born between 1989 and 1990. Each countries faced two challenges. One was to create the liberal political system and market economy. The other was new system's survival in the period of a new power vacuum in the field of international arena. The August 1991 Coup in Moscow and the rebuff delivered by the western European Countries to the efforts of 3 countries to obtain membership status of the NATO were the very reminders of the extreme fragility of 3
countries' security in the region. This article is to discuss the foreign and security policies of Poland,
Czechoslovakia(later Czech) and Hungary between the period of the collapse of the communist systems and the obtaining the NATO membership in 1999. Especially the article is focusing the summing meeting of President Walesa, President Havel and Prime Minister Antall in Visegrad, Hungary on February 15, 1991 and the summit of these same leaders in Krakow, Poland, on October 5-6, 1991. The most important points of the summits was in the area of shared threat perceptions with reference to the continuing military threat posed by Moscow, instability and chaos in the East that had led to a breakdown in trade and could lead to mass migration to the central europe. The cooperation among 3 central european countries in the period of a power vacuum let them to create new balance in East-West relations. It was also one of the essential elements of their obtaining the NATO
membership in 1999.