Greece joined the EU just seven years after the end of its military dictatorship in 1974—a much quicker pace than the accession of the central and eastern European states after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also a seven-year interval between the death of Franco and Spain’s accession to Nato in 1982. Four years later, Spain and Portugal (also freed from a dictatorship in the 1970s) joined the EU too.
All these expansions of Nato and the EU had critics at the time, who said things were going too far, too fast and would aggravate Russia. But the bigger fear was that the new democracies of Greece, Spain and Portugal might revert to authoritarianism if not rapidly incorporated. The attempted coup in Spain in 1981 was a wake-up call, as was the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus after 1974, which continues to this day.
Together with the accession of Britain and Denmark to the European Economic Community in 1973, these were the decisive enlargements which made the EU and Nato the twin pillars of the west. Most European countries have come to belong to both unions as an integral part of their European identity, prosperity and security, something inconceivable half a century ago. With Sweden and Finland likely to soon join Nato, and a queue of Balkan states following Croatia into the EU, Brexit looks ever-more mistaken and counter-productive (and there was never any question of Britain leaving Nato).
Membership of the EU plus Nato now needs to be extended to Ukraine. As soon as possible. Which could be within the new few years.
Joe Biden’s visit this week to Kyiv, including the walkabout with Volodymyr Zelensky in broad daylight, is the ultimate symbol of western prevalence in Ukraine. The revelation that Putin was notified beforehand—“for deconfliction purposes”, as the White House cryptically put it—marked the coup de grâce of the Russian dictator’s humiliation.
Try to imagine such an event taking place at the start of the war, when Kyiv was itself under attack as Putin sought to remove Zelensky and install a puppet government. There is now little chance of Russia destroying or undermining the Ukrainian state, which was Putin’s war aim last February and his objective for more than a decade previously.
The endgame of the war in the Russian-occupied eastern provinces may take some time to play out. But the longer this lasts, the heavier the toll on Russia, the less likely Putin is to survive politically or indeed physically, and the less likely he—or his Russian successor—is to gain much territory in the final reckoning.
All the concerns being voiced about Ukrainian membership of the EU and Nato have been voiced in the past about every enlargement to the south and the east. That there is too much corruption. That democracy in these countries is too weak. That it is a provocation to Russia. That the economy is insufficiently aligned.
In reality, from Greece and Spain to Croatia and Estonia, membership of the EU and Nato has proved the best antidote to these problems, all of which are fundamental country by country. War has already given Ukraine a stronger, more western and European identity than it has ever known. Post-war, the EU and Nato need to finish the job.
