The transformation of Slovak society and integration into NATO and the EU was an exciting period for me. During my tenure, the defense ministry created the principal strategic documents for the reform of the Slovak Armed Forces and developed concrete steps to achieve NATO interoperability. Jeffrey Simon's excellent book is a concise, impartial, and balanced effort describing Slovakia's complicated, arduous, ... Read moreand painful defense transformation.
Ambassador Jozef Stank, former Slovak minister of defense Jeffrey Simon is unrivaled in his knowledge of new and candidate NATO member states in Eastern Europe. The latest of his first-rate scholarship on NATO's enlargement, this volume on the Czech and Slovak Republics provides a remarkably textured examination of two cases in this historic process.
Lieutenant General (ret.) William E. Odom, former director, National Security Agency The post-Cold War period—from the collapse of communist regimes in November 1989 to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—has passed so quickly; especially for those people living in the countries in the process of transformation, who did not have time to realize that they have passed through historical changes. We, who took an active part in this process of transformation, now have the opportunity to look back and assess what we have passed through, and can appreciate the importance of Jeffrey Simon's NATO and the Czech and Slovak Republics: A Comparative Study in Civil-Military Relations. There is no study that compares with this work.
Ambassador Jaromír Novotny, former first deputy minister for foreign relations, Czech Ministry of Defense No author is better qualified, based on his detailed research and his experience, to tell the story of the emerging post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe than Jeff Simon.
Parameters
NATO and the Czech and Slovak Republics is strongly recommended for graduate students and professionals in strategic studies and comparative politics.
Perspectives on Political Science
This book could not be more timely. Jeffrey Simon, with lucidity and insight, enlightens us on the seismic changes now occurring in the European security framework. The particulars of the Czech and Slovak cases inform the reader on the overall significance of the NATO expansion and what it means for the world. This is essential reading for both those who seek to understand contemporary Europe as well as those concerned with civil-military relations.
Charles Moskos, Northwestern University Careful and informative. Simon provides a detailed chronology of defense reforms since communism's collapse.
Naval War College Review
For a younger generation of Czechs and Slovaks today at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels or deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, how first Czechoslovakia and then the Czech and Slovak Republics came to grips in the 1900s with the civil-military experience of the years 1918, 1938, 1948, and 1968 represents an issue of grand strategic necessity bound up with the accession to the Washington Treaty. In the past decade this legacy collided with the ups and downs of Czech and especially Slovak domestic politics and might have easily have scotched the bid by the two central European republics to join NATO, returning them to an uncertain existence in a new Zwischeneuropa….How policymakers in Prague and Bratislava finally cheated such fate and made their way to Brussels-Evere forms the subject of Jeffrey Simons excellent account of security sector reform between the Elbe and the Danube from the close of the 1980s to the eve of the Slovak accession to NATO in 2004.
Donald Abenheim, Naval Postgraduate School
Slavic Review
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