This chapter shifts from a focus on civilian control to a focus on military professionalism. It follows the definition of professionalism developed in Forster, Edmunds, and Cottey, in which professionalism is “based around the twin precepts of armed forces which accept that their role is to fulfill the demands of the civilian government of the state and are capable of undertaking military activities in an effective and efficient way” (2002: 6). The chapter begins with a description of the Kosovo crisis because that episode reveals clear evidence of limited professionalization in the Czech Republic and Hungary. It then moves to specific efforts at emulation — some under direct pressure from NATO but others motivated more by domestic politics — that are aimed at promoting one or more aspects of military professionalization.

The three new members entered NATO in March 1999, less than two weeks before the first war in the fifty-year history of the alliance. If, as Corelli Barnett put it, war “audits” a nation's material resources, so too does it audit its political resources. Both the Czechs and Hungarians did most of what NATO asked them to do during Operation Allied Force (and after, in terms of peacekeeping).