The phrase “Europe whole and free” was first used prominently by U.S. President George H. W. Bush in a speech on May 31, 1989, in Mainz, West Germany. Addressing an auditorium full of German citizens and political leaders, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Bush laid out his vision for the Europe that should emerge from the end of the Cold War and the waning of Communist and Soviet influence in Europe’s east. He said: Bush’s formulation was seen by foreign policy analysts, including Jim Hoagland and Arnold Horelick, as Bush’s counter-proposal to the concept of a “common European home” offered in the preceding two years by Soviet General SecretaryMikhail Gorbachev. Within two weeks of Bush’s speech, Gorbachev also visited West Germany and declared that the Soviet Union would not interfere in the liberalizations already underway among its allied states in Eastern Europe. While Gorbachev hoped to encourage liberalizing political and economic reforms among the Soviet-allied communist rulers of Europe’s east, Bush envisioned an end to communist or socialist rule and its replacement by multi-party, liberal democracies with capitalist economic systems.
Post-Cold War evolution
Less than seven months after Bush’s speech, popular protests had forced out the communist governments of Eastern Europe, and Bush and Gorbachev had held a summit meeting in Malta that some observers regarded as marking the end of the Cold War. In the decades following the Cold War’s end and the collapse of the Soviet Union, European nations and the United States pursued efforts to end Europe’s Cold War divisions. As former communist East European countries held free elections and chose non-communist governments, the United States and Western European nations agreed to include them within the continent’s main international institutions – the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – to include former Soviet and Soviet-bloc states. By 2009, NATO had admitted 12 members from formerly communist-ruled Eastern Europe: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004; and Albania and Croatia in 2009. The European Union added 11 such members: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary in 2004; Bulgaria and Romania in 2007; and Croatia in 2013. Russia opposed the inclusion of Eastern European nations, and especially the formerly Soviet Baltic states, within NATO. The Russian government’s opposition hardened under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.
