Germany's eastward urge
Germany has immense influence in Central Europe. But does it have the will to pull the three front-runners rapidly into the EU as well as NATO?
APPEND the three main countries of Central Europe to Germany, and the whole has a population of around 140m, close in size to Russia's. No such imperial marriage is in the offing, yet Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are growing increasingly dependent on their heavyweight neighbour to the west. Germany is certainly master to Central Europe's apprentices, as they scurry to enter NATO and the European Union. This trio of countries, it is often said, now constitutes Germany's “backyard”--much as Mexico and Central America do for the United States. Does such talk rattle Central Europeans? Rather the opposite. They worry that Germany may lose its will to support them.
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