Washington, D.C.
President Bush this week formally welcomed seven former Soviet-bloc states into the NATO alliance. In a ceremony on the White House lawn, Bush said the new members—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—needed NATO’s protection so they would never again suffer as they did under Soviet domination. “They endured bitter tyranny,” he said. But the absorption of the ex-communist nations into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has alarmed Moscow. When NATO announced recently that it would station four F-16 fighter jets near neighboring Lithuania, Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov complained that the alliance had adopted “an unfriendly character toward Russia.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
