But surely comparing the EU or NATO to the erstwhile "Evil Empire"
(i.e., the Soviet Union) is stretching it too far? The USSR, after all,
did not hesitate to exercise overwhelming military might against
ostensible allies such as Hungary (1956) and the Czechoslovaks (1968)?
Try telling this to the Serbs who were demonized by west European media
and then bombarded to smithereens by NATO aircraft in 1999.
Though keen on rejoining the mainstream of European history,
civilization and economy, the peoples of the acceding swathe are highly
suspicious of Western motives and wary of becoming second-class
citizens in an enlarged entity. They know next to nothing about how the
EU functions.
They are chary of another period of "shock therapy" and of creeping
cultural imperialism. Rendered cynical by decades of repression, they
resent what they regard as discriminatory accession deals imposed on
them in a "take it or leave it" fashion by the EU.
Anti-EU sentiment and Euroscepticism are vocal - though abating - even
in countries like Poland, an erstwhile bastion of Europhilia. Almost
two thirds of respondents in surveys conducted by the EU in Estonia,
Latvia, Slovenia and Lithuania are undecided about EU membership or
opposed to it altogether.
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