This was the backdrop against which NATO and the EU decided on enlargement to the East, stabilizing the immediate crisis, offering a future direction and permanently redrawing the geopolitical map.7 The double expansion of EU and NATO was not a coordinated affair. It was driven as much by the East Europeans themselves as by Washington, Berlin and Paris. Poland, Hungary, the Czechs and the Slovaks—the Visegrád group—began pushing for NATO membership as early as February 1991. The EU followed up with an association agreement. But the EU’s decision for enlargement did not follow until 1993, with
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