| Summary: | This thesis seeks to explain what hinders former neutral and non-aligned nations from fully integrating themselves into collective security regimes such as NATO, the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, and UN Peace Support Operations: What delays or denies such nations from joining? When they do join, what keeps them from providing more than a token material and personnel contribution to alliances? Examining three geographically close but historically distinct cases, Austria, Croatia and Montenegro, this work assesses their common and idiosyncratic relationships. Each case study examines five characteristics that influence national acceptance of collective security: history, government objectives, public attitudes, defense structures and operations. The study arrives at three conclusions. First, despite their proximity the three countries exhibit substantial differences in their historical, official and popular definitions of national security. Those differences strongly influence national leaders' and the voting public's views on individual collective security regimes such as the United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Second, the three nations' historical and current experience suggests that proponents of collective security should engage individual partner nations based on a more precise understanding of individual national security objectives. Finally, neither the NATO nor the EU conception for long term European collective security accurately captures what motivates these three states to seek international collaboration for their national defense.
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