Old Europe Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Old Europe, which is often used in junction with or in comparison to New Europe, is a term used in 2003 by U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to refer to those European countries that did not support the American military invasion of Iraq, especially Germany and France. He claimed that the center of gravity of Europe was moving eastward, to the New Europe, where the new democracies supported the U.S. actions in Iraq.

This divide between Old Europe and New Europe was increased with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member state expansion. The treaty, signed in 1949 by ten countries, including the United States, Canada, and ten European nations (Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom) that constituted the Old Europe, in Rumsfeld’s assertion. The subsequent enlargement increased the number of NATO members to twenty-six and included Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The cleavage between Old and New Europe also denotes the recent augmentation of the European Union’s (EU) member states. From this perspective, Old Europe indicates the six EU founding countries and the next four waves of enlargement (1973, 1981, 1986, 1995), while New Europe includes the ten countries that acceded in 2004 and the later ones, which became EU members in 2007.

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