8
some NATO programs may have weakened civilian control, which runs contrary to what they
were designed to accomplish. Hence, what led to the unintended negative consequences in this
case was a lack of understanding and/or a lack of attention to the domestic political factors of the
countries targeted for reform.
For example, one of the problems was the fact that Western policy-makers did not fully
grasp a significant difference between the state of civil-military relations and the main threats to
civilian control in Eastern Europe and other countries who have undergone democratic
transitions. Some Western policy makers talked about establishing civilian control over the
militaries in the former Communist states, which is incorrect since civilian control already existed
in these countries. What was lacking was democratic control of the military. As David Betz
rightly argued, “the military coup d’état has not been a factor in post-Communist transitions
because a professional military conviction that the armed forces should be the servant of the state
was a central feature of the Soviet-type system of civil-military relations.”
11
Hence, what the
post-Communist reforms had to achieve is not establishing civilian control over the military, but
transforming one model of civilian control into another – moving from civilian control by the
Communist party to democratic civilian control.
12
That is why, previous Western experience with the programs designed to strengthen
civilian control was not necessarily relevant. For example, both scholars and policy-makers alike
who have been highly influenced by research on civil-military relations in Latin American
countries, when thinking about strengthening civilian control of the military in East Central
Europe, assume that the main problem and threat to democracy in that country is a powerful
military with a strong desire to intervene in domestic politics, which could get out of control and
overturn a civilian government. Although true for some Latin American countries in the 1970s,
this would be a wrong assumption for the post-Communist states, where major problems were
related with the lack of civilian experts on military affairs. That is why it is important to focus
our analysis not only on the military, but on the civilian side of the civil-military relationship as
Convention