The long shadow of history: Civilian control and military effectiveness in Poland

Abstract

This chapter presents partial results of a longitudinal study tracing the challenges that joining NATO posed to the armed forces and the defense policies of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Poland, being one of the first former Warsaw Pact countries to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), exhibits features typical of all former communist countries to join the Alliance. Joining it, as our research conclusively shows, was the single most important factor contributing to the establishment of democratic civilian control of the Polish Armed Forces. However, we discovered that some institutional changes, considered necessary for such control, were mainly cosmetic. Though the Polish Ministry of Defense is led by a civilian, its staff is thought to consist of only some 40% civilians, most of them in low positions. The parliamentary committee overseeing the armed forces is bereft of specialists and the military still resists civilian researchers’ requests for even the most basic information about its workings. The Polish experience of defense and military policy reform suggests the need, at their very start, to secure an adequate pool of highly qualified civilian experts in all matters military. Without them reform is meaningless, otherwise civilian politicians will always be dependent on the military to provide necessary information. The other important lesson of this study is that the most contentious aspects of defense and military policy reform should be enacted at their very start, while the internal pressure for change is at its strongest and the outside scrutiny the most intense. We also noted, that the military culture remains the most neglected aspect of civil-military relations studies in Poland, yet, our research shows that cultural factors alone can explain important dynamics in civil-military relations.