The “New Europe” Concept Revisited

The recent use of the “New Europe” label by American policymakers comes as no surprise, as US foreign policy has been hijacked a second time this century by neoconservatives. Unfortunately, what the neoconservatives have overlooked is the true " graveyard of empires" role played in the modern era by the nations from this area of Europe. Indeed, all the major European empires which attempted to dominate it , like Austria ,Germany or France, as well as outside powers like Russia or the Ottomans , imploded. Therefore there is no reason to believe that US domination of it will have a better fate than that of its other imperial predecessors.

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Since the start of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine in 2022, the discredited geopolitical concept known as  “New Europe” -launched in 2003 by the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld- has started being used again in American official narratives about Eastern Europe.

The concept “of New Europe” was coined by Rumsfeld after NATO’s leading allies in Europe -France and Germany- flatly refused to participate alongside the American and British troops in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

“New Europe” referred to ex-Soviet satellites like the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and even Bulgaria, which were supposed to be more pliant to NATO’s geostrategic objectives in Europe.

Already by 2003 after NATO’s bombing campaign in Serbia or the Iraq invasion, the alliance was thoroughly discredited as a peacekeeping organisation. In spite of Russian objections, however, NATO expanded eastwards and by 2008 at its Summit in Bucharest the Americans were talking about including Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. Again, this objective was defeated by the opposition of the French and German leaders, who knew that the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO would be an absolute red line for Moscow, as the then-US ambassador to Russia William Burns also warned his bosses in Washington.

20 years later the concept of “New Europe” has resurfaced again in American political discourse, a fact that should come as no surprise, since neoconservatives have hijacked American policy a second time, as they did during the George W Bush presidency. Now as then, neoconservative-inspired foreign policy has ignited a devastating military conflict, this time being fought on NATO’s behalf by Ukrainian proxies. 

Like in 2003, the Americans include in this group of countries they call “New Europe” almost all of the USSR’s former satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, from Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. What US policymakers have not mentioned to these new NATO members is the fact that they would simply substitute American hegemony to that of the Soviets without actually considering them -as it was the case between 1949 and 1989 with France, Italy or Germany- equal alliance partners on the European continent. 

To their discredit, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian leaders have failed to realise that what took place was just a change in colonial masters: from the neighbouring USSR to the much more distant USA; from a land-based military superpower to a maritime superpower.

This confusion in the minds of Central and Eastern European political leaders has been fully exploited by the US, which convinced them to invest their countries’ hard-earned billions into American weaponry and to prepare for war with Russia, a war that -needless to say- is not about to happen. Thus, states in the region were persuaded to invest between 2.5% (Romania) to 4.5% of their GDP (Poland) in military hardware, with a view to getting American security guarantees against an enemy that does not plan to invade them anytime soon.

What American geostrategists fail to realise is that they have applied the New Europe label to the most anti-imperialist region of Europe. Accordingly, it is just a matter of time for ex-Soviet satellite countries to grasp that what has actually happened is just a change in colonial masters. When that takes place, the time-honoured anti-imperialist traditions of nations in the area will reassert themselves in a forceful way, jeopardising American plans to establish themselves as the new masters of Central and Eastern Europe.

The "New Europe" NATO Summit in Bucharest

November 6, 2015

The fact that the EU is undergoing its most profound existential crisis ever is by now an open secret. The Greek debt crisis had produced a North-South divide in Europe, whereas the migrant crisis has prompted a rebellion against the EU leadership from Eastern bloc members. Nowadays, NATO itself is contributing to the existing divisions by bringing back to life the “Old Europe – New Europe” division of the Bush Jr. era.

Thus, on the 3rd and 4th of November, NATO has organized a “ Presidents’ Summit “ which took place behind closed doors in Bucharest. The meeting was attended by nine presidents of EU member countries from Central and Eastern Europe, and resulted in a declaration which could rightly be called an anti-Juncker document. The final document stressed the need to strengthen ties with the United States and stand united against “Russian aggressiveness”.

It is an undisputed fact that the EU’s eastern and southern borders are far from secure as a result of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Both conflicts were ignited by American covert operations or outright military intervention in those regions, which have very little to do – if at all – with EU foreign or neighbourhood policies’ objectives.

Still, the EU is paying the price for American foreign policy amateurism, which is what has prompted Juncker and Merkel’s recent overtures towards Russia and Turkey. To be sure, Juncker’s declaration concerning Russia and Merkel’s visit to Turkey are by and large part of a PR exercise meant to soothe the leadership in Moscow and Ankara and maybe pave the way for a reset of the EU’s relations with the two countries.

The summit in Bucharest went largely ignored in the international media because of the current street protests in the Romanian capital. By reviving Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” concept, however, and by trying to pitch the leaders of Central and Eastern European countries against the president of the European Commission, the Americans are contributing plenty towards aggravating the rifts that threaten the very existence of the EU. Whilst this might not be their ultimate intention, the outcome of the latest NATO strategy in Europe is going to hurt transatlantic ties more than it would stunt Juncker and Merkel’s efforts to patch up relations with Russia or Turkey.