Making defense planning meaningful: the evolution of strategic guidance in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense

Hungary, a former communist state, adapted a Western-style defense planning system during the 1990s and 2000s. Although on the surface the elements of this planning system were similar to the planning programming budgeting system (PPBS) developed by the US Department of Defense, strategic guidance for defense planning has not been properly developed until recently. Thus, albeit PPBS-based defense plans were developed in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense (Hungarian MoD) regularly, they lacked both an expression of clear priorities and strategic focus. This article delineates the evolution of strategic guidance in the Hungarian MoD concentrating on current developments, and introduces the newly elaborated analytical concepts and tools, which helped to create needed strategic guidance in Hungary.     

Militarisation of cooperation against mass migration – the Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC)

As a result of the migration crisis of 2015–2016, the management of mass migration and border control became militarised in Central Europe, and this process has also reshaped the dynamics of multinational defence cooperation in the region. Accordingly, while the so-called Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC) was created by Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2010 to support NATO and EU capability development projects via defence cooperation, after the migration crisis it became the major Central European forum for military cooperation against irregular mass migration. Although many defence officials in the region are not necessarily enthusiastic about this development, the Central European political environment and also practical defence considerations pushed the defence ministries of CEDC countries towards deeper cooperation on border control, as well as better coordination with ministries of interior affairs on the national and the regional levels.