The Prague Spring 1968 was something of an exception, but it instantaneously became clear that the West would do nothing to aid the Czechoslovaks. Even in 1989, there was great nervousness in Western capitals about the changes that were occurring in the region.
How did this situation change with the collapse of the Soviet Union? What were the opportunities and what are the challenges that continued to exist in East-Central Europe?
Once communism fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, there were great hopes in the West that East Central Europe would quickly engage in what was called a "transition" to democracy and market capitalism. Both in the region itself and in the West, there was a sense that this transition would be easy and seamless. The core of the economic program was privatization of state firms, the dominance of free market conditions, and the attraction of investment capital from the West. Western confidence in its ability to transform communist societies into capitalist democracies was exemplified in Francis Fukuyama's famous work on "The End of History." There was only one system that worked -- ours -- and it would have a world-wide impact. However,
the economic transition proved much more difficult and, in some cases, traumatic,
as the destruction of one economic system, even if sickly, was not so easily replaced by another. But the political transitions, though fraught with a variety of issues, nevertheless, seemed to "take" in the region. By the beginning of the 21st century, the countries of East Central Europe had made enough economic and political progress to be admitted into NATO and the European Union. So, in the end, the "transition" worked, though it took much longer and had many more problems than policymakers of the 1990s thought.
How do you see the question of sovereignty and national interest in the European Union?
Sovereignty is essential for the integrity and sense of purpose of modern nation states -- in Europe and around the world. How individual European states pursue their interests within the European Union, which I see essentially as a confederation, is really up to them. There are trade-offs, bargains, negotiating that needs to go on between individual states and the Union that provides them with concrete benefits.
But I do not see the EU evolving into a federation or a "United States of Europe."