Internal and External Security in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Results of a 10-Nation Study

Abstract: Security issues in East-Central Europe have received a high profile recently with the proposed entry of three post-Communist countries into NATO and discussion about further widening this alliance. The collapse of communism and dissolutionof the Warsaw Pact has brought new military alignments and potentialities. However, with the transformation of these countries into democratic societies, the views of the population also need to be taken into account. In this paper we report the results of a longitudinal, representative sample survey of ten post-Communist countries in East-Central Europe: Hungary, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Croatia. The paper compares the results of questions about attitudes to internal and external security in 1992 and 1996 in each of these countries. In particular, we consider subjective perceptions of threat from neighbouring countries, from great powers such as Russia, Germany and the USA, fromnational minorities and ethnic groups and from immigrants and migrants. In this context we analyse their views on NATO membership. We compare these countries in general by constructing an index of perceptions of threat. The results imply that the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the Central European buffer zone feel far more insecurity than the countries of the former Soviet Union in our sample, and these are also the countries which would most like to join NATO.;