That doesn't help, when the Clifton administration faces a hard sell in the U.S. Senate, which must ratify the expansion plan along with the legislatures of other NATO members. Various polls say more than 50 percent of Czechs support NATO membership, but only half of those consider it a priority. In Poland, polls have found the support for membership in NATO significantly stronger. And Hungarians overwhelmingly accepted NATO's invitation in Sunday's binding referendum. With nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, election officials said 85 percent of voters supported membership.
History partly explains the disparities.
For centuries, Poles were dominated by Moscow. Hungarians vividly remember the Soviet army's bloody crushing of an anti-communist uprising in 1956. But transition problems are not unique to the Czechs. One major, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he quit a part-time job as a waiter after some of his men showed up and ordered beer. Some soldiers went without hot showers or heat last winter, because inflation ate up money for fuel.