West European Responses to Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

This chapter examines the individual and collective responses of the West Europeans to the events of 1989 and 1990 and to make some judgements about the extent to which they were able to rise to the leadership challenge that these events posed. The Western European Union had been semi-revived as part of the search for a framework within which the West Europeans might develop a common security stance. In July 1989 the G7 met in Paris and once again it was the US in association with the West Germans who took the lead in searching for a coordinated response to developments in Poland and Hungary. In 1990, the West Europeans had to face up to the longer term consequences of the transformation in Eastern Europe that was completed with the Romanian revolution at the end of December 1989 as well as to a deteriorating situation in the Soviet Union.