Completing Europe: A Response to Ronald Asmus

In an earlier essay in this series, Ronald Asmus argued that the consensus and strategic paradigm that had guided the enlargement of NATO and the EU to Central and Eastern Europe since the mid 1990s had crumbled and no longer fited current strategic circumstances. He says that absent a new narrative for further enlargement and a revised strategy for accomplishing it, the historic window for extending core Western institutions to new democracies as part of building a Europe that was unified, free, and at peace was likely to close. Iris Kempe took issue with that view and argued that it was too pessimistic. She contends that key elements of that narrative already existed, that important institutional building blocks for further enlargement led by the European Union were being put into place and that a new narrative could and should be framed around the theme of ' Completing Europe. '

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