Vladimir Putin and other Russian government figures have attempted to use the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe following the end of the Cold War as a justification for their decision to invade Ukraine in 2022. What was the actual context of the enlargement of NATO to include Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic?
In this talk, recorded in 2011 at a panel discussion hosted by the Foreign Policy Association, Andrzej Topic, then Permanent Representative of Poland to the United Nations, shared his perspective.
Ambassador Topic said, "The desire of our countries to join NATO was not an attempt to reverse or to shift alliances and to replace [the] Warsaw Treaty with NATO. The first reason behind our efforts was to overcome the division of Europe. And in fact discussion concerning enlargement in essence was not about alliances in the future, it was mainly discussion on the future of Europe. Our countries wanted to overcome not only the post-Yalta order, but also historical division of Europe, the division that existed in the minds of politicians and public opinion of the west for, I would say, centuries […] and I believe that NATO enlargement has become in fact one of the most promising and prominent steps towards the overcoming this not only post-war, but historical division of Europe.”
To watch the full panel discussion, please click here: [ Ссылка ]
