The “New Europe” as I Saw It

Can you believe it?


It had been almost 30 years since John Kennedy delivered his “Ich Ein Berliner” speech and stirred the imagination of the entire Free World.


It would require another American president, Ronald Reagan, to turn that dream into reality three decades hence.


Now that the “New Europe” has since been freed from the tyranny of both Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler, what do neo-Europeans think of their new freedom?


I set out in March of 1989 to understand just that on an escorted land tour running from London, all the way down to Rome, and then back to London.


In the intervening years, quite a lot has happened, including the gradual evolution of the BeNeLux Treaty countries into the European Union, a global economic power,


After that came the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its fifteen republics into that number of independent states. As political scientists often anguish. “Gorbachev turned into Yeltsin, and then Yeltsin turned into Putin.”

Finally came the Covid-19 Pandemic, something that neither Europe nor the world is yet to see the end of.