The half-hearted transformation of the Hungarian military

Abstract:

The paper analyses the few successes and many failures of the defence reform of Hungary since the system change of 1990. It concludes that the failures have been due to objective reasons. Namely, due to the multiple changes that had to be carried out in politics, economy and the society the defence sector has been losing out in a largely threat-free environment. The shortage of human and financial resources is aggravated by the subjective mistakes, including waste and corruption. The difficulties Hungary has been facing - similarly to most countries in East-Central Europe - point to a pertinent question: why have defence reforms failed in most cases in the new democracies generally?

• Primary Source