Michael Zantovsky, the chairman of the Czech Senate's Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Security Committee, announced in June 2001 that the planned modernization and professionalization of the Czech Army would take two election terms (i.e., eight years). A month later his counterpart in the Chamber of Deputies (the legislature's lower house), Petr Necas, lamented that Prime Minister Miloš Zeman's cabinet had “done nothing” to promote military reform since the country's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In March 2001 General Lajos Fodor, Chief of the Hungarian Defense Forces' (HDF) General Staff, revealed that the country's air force would be unable to meet NATO's requirements for pilot training “again this year.” His views were corroborated by a recent NATO report which proclaimed that the HDF would not be able to fully participate in the Alliance until the end of 2003. NATO leaders have repeatedly castigated not only the Czech Republic and Hungary, but also Poland for the relatively modest sums they spend on defense despite their earlier pledges to reform their militaries in accordance with NATO criteria. They have every right to do so: Since 1999 these countries have been full members of the Alliance.

The enlargement of NATO has been one of the most important events in post-Cold War international affairs, American foreign policy, and East European politics. In 1997, NATO invited the three East-Central European states in which democratization and market-oriented transitions had progressed the farthest – Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland – to join its ranks.