“Transatlantic Relations beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe between the United States and the European Union”

and the geopolitical area east of the “Iron Curtain”, the invisible and yet real border between the Western and Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. The analysis is diachronic and examines the development of relations between these actors since the fall of the Berlin Wall. My argument is that the US late willingness but then firm ability to take the lead in the Balkan wars and carry a disproportionate share of the burden compared to the EU and its member states highlighted the different American and European approaches to the quest for self-determination and sovereignty in the region; it sharpened the transatlantic drift and highlighted the inconsistency of EU internal cohesion which proved dramatically weak; eventually, it wedged a distance between the EU neighbors – whose Atlantic allegiance was reinforced - and Brussels. The EU shortcomings in dealing with the region’s transition from the Yugoslav Federation to a complex and multiple state-building process impaired its ability to emerge as a full-fledged international actor and reliable partner in the Atlantic Alliance; furthermore, it damaged its credibility with regard to the Balkan States that looked beyond the Atlantic, leaning more toward the US than toward the EU.