The Pleiades Join the Stars: Transatlanticism and Eastern Enlargement

Abstract

EU enlargement and the inclusion of countries previously under communist domination led many West Europeans as well as Americans to think these countries would play the role of a ‘Trojan Horse’. These new EU members indeed have tended to approach the US with greater understanding, but these attitudes differ little from those of Western Europe after the end of World War II. East European pro-Americanism may turn out, however, to be short-lived. This paper argues that the real tension within Europe comes not from the East Europeans' attitudes toward transatlanticism or the Iraq War but rather from their dramatically different experiences under Soviet rule. Based on their empirical experience with Moscow and vital national interests in the democratisation of the EU's neighbourhood, the new members are unlikely to challenge old members over the US; when it comes to Russia, the prospects are quite different.

Notes

Although some maintain that Chirac was mistranslated (see e.g. Levieux and Levieux 2003), probably irreparable damage was done to East European publics' attitudes toward Chirac.

Though not necessarily. Many East Europeans view these as examples of diplomatic collusion between the Russians and the West and multilateral appeasement at their expense, an apprehension that continues to this day.

Slovenia, the eighth formerly communist country to join the EU in 2004, does not fall into this group for the simple reason that it was never occupied by nor subject to the USSR, nor did it belong, as a member of Yugoslavia, to the Warsaw Pact. Slovenia's own attitude toward post-communist Russia has accordingly been far more circumspect.

All three Baltic states had to dance through hoops to obtain visa-free travel to Europe and achieved this almost a decade after the Visegrad countries. Indeed, Estonia was the only accession country whose delegation had to obtain visas to attend accession negotiations as late as the beginning of 1999.

Typical but by no means isolated was the commentary by the otherwise pro-European Erki Bahovski in the Estonian daily Postimees on 26 February 2005, pointing out that only the US has the courage to take a tough line on democracy in Russia.