Image: OÖN graphics
When NATO suddenly grew by seven members 20 years ago, the world was still under the impression of 9/11 – the Islamist terrorist attacks in the USA on September 11, 2001. That’s why the then US President George W. Bush praised it the heads of government of the new countries – Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – especially for their commitment to the war on terror.
Bush did so at the White House on March 29, 2004, after the countries deposited their instruments of ratification at the U.S. State Department. As early as 2003, all of these countries had joined the “coalition of the willing” forged by Bush to support the controversial US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It was NATO’s largest round of enlargement. It immediately became clear that this upset Moscow. Russia, whose president was already Vladimir Putin, was particularly bothered by the fact that the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had been involuntarily part of the Soviet Union until 1991, joined the Western alliance. The other new members – apart from Slovenia, which had been part of Yugoslavia during the Cold War – had belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.
Image: OÖN graphics
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Image: OÖN graphics
Source: Nachrichten
