When my administration started, in 1993, no one felt certain that a post–Cold War Europe would remain peaceful, stable, and democratic. Big questions remained about East Germany’s integration with West Germany, whether old conflicts would explode across the continent as they did in the Balkans, and how former Warsaw Pact nations and newly independent Soviet republics would seek security, not just against the threat of Russian invasion, but from one another and from conflicts within their borders. The possibility of EU and NATO membership provided the greatest incentives for Central and Eastern European states to invest in political and economic reforms and abandon a go-it-alone strategy of militarization.

Neither the EU nor NATO could stay within the borders Stalin had imposed in 1945. Many countries that had been behind the Iron Curtain were seeking greater freedom, prosperity, and security with the EU and NATO, under inspiring leaders such as Václav Havel in the Czech Republic, Lech Wałęsa in Poland, and, yes, a young pro-democracy Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Thousands of everyday citizens crowded the squares of Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and beyond whenever I spoke there.

As Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister, tweeted in December 2021, “It wasn’t NATO seeking to go East, it was former Soviet satellites and republics wishing to go West.”