Graduate Program

Political Science

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2005

Thesis Director

Ryan Hendrickson

Thesis Committee Member

David Carwell

Thesis Committee Member

Lilian Barria

Abstract

In 1999 at the Madrid Summit, NATO officially opened its doors to three new states. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were the first states to enter NATO since the end of the Cold War. The idea of NATO expansion has been heavily contested and critics argue that these new members do not have the capabilities to be strong contributors to the alliance and are unable to produce modern defense systems. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have all taken unique paths on the way into the alliance and all three states since their induction have in some form attempted to rejuvenate their defenses.

This thesis focuses specifically on the defense spending policies and trends of these three new NATO member states in order to indicate the direction in which each of their militaries have progressed and whether or not they have attempted to modernize their defenses. It examines the overall defense spending in the form of defense budget, actual expenditures, and their percentage of defense spending as a percentage of their gross domestic product. Also, this thesis will reveal who has benefited from these states attempt to modernize their defenses. The Prague Summit in 2002 called on each NATO member to modernize their military in order to combat current oppositions. The research in this thesis demonstrates how Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have responded to NATO's standards given at the Prague Summit and reveals an overall analysis on the defense situation of each state from 2002-2004.

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