Introduction: Explaining NATO and EU Enlargement
Journal: Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks
Year: 2010

The collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s left the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) not only with the delight of freedom but also with a chilling reality of post-Soviet economic, political, and social chaos. Feeling betrayed, compromised, and abandoned to the mercy of the Soviet tyranny for the past half a century, CEECs demanded full integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures as the only way to get a peaceful revenge on the ghosts of the past and to ensure a prosperou