The Enlargement of the European Union

Organizational enlargement should be seen as an issue at the heart of the security debate in US-EU security relations since the end of the Cold War. It has represented an attempt to overcome the military security divide in Europe and return the continent to normal, rather than ‘securitized’, politics. It has therefore raised a question mark about the ‘overlay’ of superpower interests and the future role of the US in European security. Mindful that decisions taken by the EU would impact on its interests, American policymakers were concerned at the risk of being excluded from decisions about an enlarging Europe. The influence that the US could wield derived also from the decisive role that it could play in the enlargement of NATO.