military alliance
20 years ago: NATO’s largest expansion
A huge blue flag with the inscription “Latvija Nato 20” is unfurled in front of the Freedom Monument. Latvia celebrates 20 years of NATO membership. photo
© Alexander Welscher/dpa
On March 29, 2004, seven Eastern European countries joined NATO. Not everyone was enthusiastic about this. Even the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine didn’t change much.
He did this on March 29, 2004 at the White House after the seven countries deposited their instruments of ratification for NATO membership with the US State Department. A year earlier, 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 expansion. 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 – with the exception of Slovenia – had belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.
Enthusiasm for NATO was greatest in the countries geographically closest to Russia: Romania and the Baltic States, with approval ratings of over 80 percent. The trend has continued to this day. Anti-Russian sentiment had a long tradition in Romania. In addition, joining NATO was a question of national prestige: people had finally arrived in the Western world. The highlight so far has been the construction of the US missile defense shield system in Deveselu, southern Romania, in 2016.
Romania’s head of state wants to become NATO Secretary General
Now Romania’s head of state Klaus Iohannis is openly applying for the position of NATO Secretary General. It is unclear whether the Eastern Europeans will support him. In any case, the Dutchman Mark Rutte, the candidate for NATO leadership favored by the USA and Germany, among others, is not a preferred candidate in the East. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves recently complained that the West treats the countries of Eastern Europe with disdain, also with reference to candidate Rutte.
For the Balts, with a total of only around six million inhabitants, NATO membership, which has never been controversial, is seen as the most important security guarantee against their neighbor Russia. Without NATO, her country would be “one of those countries like Georgia or Moldova (…) that are currently in the gray zone. We don’t know (…) what will happen to them in the future,” she recently explained former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who led her country into the EU and NATO in 2004.
Measured by their economic performance, the Balts spent the most on defense of the seven countries according to NATO figures in 2023: Estonia 2.89 percent of GDP, Latvia 2.37 percent and Lithuania 2.75 percent. For better protection, the so-called Baltic defense line is to be built on the border with Russia and its ally Belarus – including anti-tank ditches, ammunition depots and mine camps.
Less sympathy for the Alliance
The mood is completely different in Bulgaria, Slovenia and Slovakia. Bulgaria’s then Foreign Minister Solomon Passi had tears in his eyes when his country’s flag was hoisted at NATO headquarters for the first time in 2004. Not all Bulgarians shared these feelings, nor do they today. “I wouldn’t say there was ever any euphoria for NATO membership,” Gallup International Balkan Executive Director Parwan Simeonov said in Sofia. At the beginning of this year, trust in NATO was only 35 percent. In Slovakia, accession was controversial from the start. Surveys in advance did not show a certain majority in favor. However, the Russian war against Ukraine has increased sympathy for the alliance.
The willingness to help Ukraine has so far varied on a rhetorical level in Sofia and Bratislava, depending on who was calling the shots politically. The pro-Western government of Bulgaria has so far also supported Kiev militarily. However, Head of State Rumen Radev is considered Russia-friendly, as is Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has been in office since October 2023. Both countries supply ammunition to Ukraine – Bulgaria has been doing so through intermediaries since the beginning of the war. Slovakia has also handed over its air defense missile system and Soviet-built fighter aircraft to Ukraine.
Radev and Fico advocate an end to the war through negotiations – in contrast to their colleagues in the Baltics, who call for doing everything for Ukraine’s victory under the motto “Whatever it takes.”
The small ex-Yugoslav Adriatic country Slovenia defined joining NATO as an important goal when it became independent in 1991. However, only 66 percent of Slovenes voted in favor of it in a 2003 referendum. Today, according to surveys, this proportion is only 52 percent. Defense spending is only 1.33 percent of GDP. This makes the country one of the worst performers in NATO. In Ljubljana there is even a party in government that supports leaving NATO: the small left-wing party Levica is therefore demonstratively staying away from the government’s NATO anniversary celebrations.