How France Lost its Mustard: A Story of War, Famine, and Western Negligence

 An unusual phenomenon has struck France in the last six months; where once sat jars of mustard lining the condiment aisle at grocery stores now sits empty. Upon first glance this may seem as just another random food shortage, likely spurred by the seemingly never-ending production and shipping issues resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But for the average French citizen who consumes one kilogram of mustard a year, and for a country that describes mustard as its favorite condiment, this is no small issue. Thus, outrage ensued. The national mustard shortage has made the product impossible to find, leaving individuals to turn to social media to beg fellow users for donations or to show off their sacred spread. French shoppers were forced to deal with a grim reality: mustard was nowhere to be found. 

At the root of this shortage lies a much larger international crisis: the war in Ukraine. Indeed, mustard production is a large part of both Russia and Ukraine’s agricultural yield. Ukraine is the fourth largest producer of mustard seed, and the second largest exporter. However, they produce a different mustard then the French, Dijon variant. The Ukrainian mustard seed is typically a milder one, and hugely popular within Eastern European countries. However, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, production and export of the mustard seed has stopped, forcing Eastern European buyers to turn to French mustard instead, which has upped demand for French mustard, thus causing the shortage.

Mustard seed production is not the only export that has halted ever since Putin ordered the Russian army to invade earlier this year, other valuable exports such as wheat, barley, and corn have faced similar deficits due to the conflict. The widespread fighting has significantly decreased the areas available for harvest, particularly in the territories of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kyiv. 

International Food Shortages

         Ukraine’s countryside is home to some of the most fertile land on the planet. The US International Trade Administration (ITA) estimates that Ukraine possesses close to a third of the world’s black soil reserves, (a fertile and moist soil that produces the highest agricultural yields). It is thanks to this fertile land that Ukraine is commonly labeled “the breadbasket of the world.” The country produces large amounts of grain, wheat, and barley, and exports around 90% of its total production. Alongside grain production, Ukraine also exports large amounts of corn and sunflower oil. Ukraine exports its goods to all four corners of the globe, but its primary areas of export are to Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Ukraine sends its food to the places that need it most: developing countries that are heavily reliant on wheat and corn and are sensitive to price increases and shortages. These countries include Somalia, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt and Sudan. During times of peace, Ukraine was easily able to export its wheat and other grain products, but current Russian blockades along the Black Sea coast are preventing the trade of necessary food supplies.

         According to Ukrainian crisis management scholar, Anna Nagurney, over 400 million people across the world rely on food from Ukraine. Additionally, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, estimates that around 181 million people could face a food crisis or famine this year, caused by shortages and increased prices. [*3] At the root of this issue lies the millions of tons of Ukrainian agricultural production that has halted ever since the war began. Now, millions of vulnerable people across the world face the threat of a deadly famine.

         For many across the Western world, this minor mustard shortage in France marked the first realization of the ongoing war’s broader implication. Since the start of the War in early 2022 the West has been largely concerned with Europe’s reliance on energy from Russia. The threat of a gas shortage in Europe has dominated Western media headlines, leaving little room for concern or interest in the ways Ukraine has supported other corners of the world. Although it is an inherent truth that a country’s media primarily focus on issues that affect its own people (European and American news sources and media cannot be blamed entirely), the neglect of this crisis reflects a deep failure within Western media to document crises unrelated to us.

The Failure of the West

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, European and American war and conflict experts have neglected to draw attention to the wider implications of the war. There has been little to no analysis or discourse on Russia’s role in Africa’s food crisis and Russian hunger politics. Instead, much of the discourse around the war in primary news outlets has analyzed the psychology behind Putin’s decision to invade, or how the West should have seen the war coming. Other popular opinions tend to focus on the war’s implications for shifting the balance of power, the return of NATO, and the impact sanctions will have on the energy crisis. What is missing from this conversation is a thorough understanding of Putin’s ambition in other parts of the world, and how war routinely affects vulnerable and dependent populations first.

By choosing to focus on the ways that the West will be affected, politicians, scholars, and other experts have fundamentally failed to understand the global stake of this war and the true global reach of Russia’s intentions. Russia is starving the Global South as a political tactic to help them win the war. Putin is employing Stalin’s tactic in the 1930’s of political famine once again to help end sanctions against Russia, and create a narrative for African and Asian countries in which Ukraine is seen as the witholder of food and fuel. Yale historian and author, Timothy Snyder, believes that Russia’s tactic of global starvation is a modern attempt at Russian colonialism. In June this year Snyder reflected on the increasing signs of starvation and tweeted that “a world famine is a necessary backdrop for a Russian propaganda campaign against Ukraine. Actual mass death is needed as the backdrop for a propaganda contest.”

The Politics of Starvation

2022 was already expected to be a year of famine and starvation, thanks to ongoing droughts and inflation, but Putin’s role has only magnified the famine’s effects. Countries have already started to prepare for increased food prices and lack of goods: “Some countries are reacting by trying to protect domestic supplies. India has restricted sugar and wheat exports, while Malaysia halted exports of live chickens, alarming Singapore, which gets a third of its poultry from its neighbor.” Snyder believes that Russia’s international famine campaign has three components, each designed to weaken a different part of the world. Firstly, Russian blockages of Ukrainian goods hope to end the narrative of Ukraine as the “breadbasket of the world” for the vast majority of countries that receive its wheat and grain, such as Somalia, Libya, and Lebanon. Putin hopes this will decrease support for Ukrainian freedom and destroy the concept of Ukrainian statehood. Secondly, Putin hopes that this famine will increase the rates of refugee migration into an already politically unstable Europe, as people from Sub-saharan Africa flee into Europe in hopes of finding food and a better quality of life. Putin’s final goal within his mass-starvation tactic is one of political propaganda. Putin plans to blame Western sanctions for food supply issues, thus creating a narrative in which the West is to blame for global starvation. A successful change in narrative for Putin will thus ensure that Russian citizens (many of which are already angry at the war and the effects of sanctions) remain ignorant and naive of the true nature of Putin’s strategic thinking. 

Russia’s need for strong and powerful propaganda is only growing, thanks to Russia’s first military mobilization since World War II, which was announced in late September. The latest increase in military efforts has led to more protests by Russian citizens angry at the Kremlin. Over a thousand citizens were arrested in cities across the country as they protested the need for the 300,000 new troops that Russian officials are demanding.

Frustration and resentment across Russia will only grow as the war continues, therefore Putin’s need to create global implications and shift Russian anger outward will only become more pressing as time goes on. By framing the issues and effects of the war as part of a larger Western-led campaign to starve the world, Putin can prevent his citizens from rising up against him. Russians are already subjected to misinformation and propaganda about the war. The Kremlin has successfully convinced millions of Russian citizens that the war is Ukraine’s fault, spreading stories that “Ukrainians had fired on Russian forces during the cease-fire, and neo-Nazis were “hiding behind civilians as a human shield.” This disinformation tactic makes Russians particularly susceptible to Putin’s lies and less likely to understand his starvation politics. 

Putin has also applied the same tactics of disinformation to African nations, in an attempt to spread anti-West and anti-UN sentiment, while gaining political influence. Putin’s expansion of propaganda to Africa reveals the true diabolical nature of his intentions. Already aware of the need to provide an explanation for the lack of resources exported from Ukraine, Russia has established at least sixteen known operations of disinformation across the continent, otherwise known as dezinformatsyia. The goal of these campaigns is to shift anger onto the West, deny Russia’s role in withholding exports, and prop up political regimes that support Russia’s political ambitions. Through the use of sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Tiktok, Russia has actively succeeded in creating often untraceable campaigns of lies. The extent to which Russia has spread falsehoods through the continent should both alarm and frighten the West. 

         It is time for Western leaders to acknowledge the global implications of the war in Ukraine, and their correlation to famine and food shortages.  In an attempt to spread concern and awareness, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stated “Global hunger levels are at a new high. In just two years, the number of severely food insecure people has doubled, from 135 million pre-pandemic to 276 million today … More than half a million people are living in famine conditions — an increase of more than 500 percent since 2016.” These numbers are already alarming without the added implications of war. Given these circumstances, it is vital that Western leaders work directly with countries already affected by these devastating food shortages. Similarly, Western media must turn its gaze to the international crisis of halted Ukrainian exports. Western negligence has not only led to widespread famine, but it has also allowed Putin to create a devastating narrative of political propaganda in which millions will starve as unknown casualties of a senseless war. 

Uniting Europe: How Closing the Digital Divide Between Eastern and Western Europe Will Strengthen the EU

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine destabilized the entire international world order by bringing war back to Europe, but more importantly it has revealed the greater need for stability and unity between Western and Eastern Europe. One method to counteract Putin’s threats and to improve the international standing of the European Union is to close the digital divide between Eastern and Western Europe, thus working to unite the continent, bring technological innovation to regions previously untouched by it, and promoting EU initiatives and popularity. The OECD defines the digital divide as “the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities.” The technological gap also reflects broader socio-economic issues of the impact of Communism. 

A Geographical Digital Divide 

The history of the digital divide lies in the legacy of the Cold War, a difference in economies, and the devastating impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Technology innovation has defined much of the European Union in the twentieth century. The member states involved have sought to digitize their economies and industries, while also setting the world wide standard for regulations regarding data and privacy. Yet, Eastern European countries, both in and out of the European Union have largely failed to adopt the same technological success of countries such as Germany and Finland. 

The root of this issue is an economic one. Eastern European countries tend to be poorer than Western Europe and thus have less financial resources to spend on investing in new technological projects or working to adapt to modern tech innovation. The Cold War deeply impacted Eastern Europe’s ability to adapt to technology. Although the internet boom occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the countries under the Iron Curtain had already been cut off for decades from Western modernity. Despite the Soviet Union heavily promoting science and technology during its reign of power, the eventual weakening of their economy and the larger socio-economic issues of the late eighties prevented the Soviet Union from maintaining their high standards of technological innovation. When integration and trade between East and West finally started, the East was forced to exist in a state of perpetual “catch up” compared with their Western peers. 

The European Union has welcomed more and more former Soviet countries into its membership. In 2004 the largest enlargement took place, in which the EU added Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Since 2004 many Eastern European countries now play a role in the EU, but according to a report from the World Bank, they lack “​​the composition of spending across innovation activities and the allocation across the different types of technologies.” While the EU has attempted to spread its technological incentives throughout all states, the fact remains that some member states are better at adapting and implementing new technology given their stronger economic stability or prior interest in technological advancement. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic both worsened the digital divide but also highlighted the need for change. WIth in-person connection no longer a possibility, companies and economies were forced to adapt to a more digitized world, in which many firms moved entirely online. Member states such as Germany proved to adapt more easily to the digitalization required by the conditions of the pandemic and even thrive under it. During the pandemic, the city of Berlin developed the Digital Skills Map (DSM) to promote the sharing of ideas and encourage  “pan-EU dialogue around how digital developments are transforming the labor market. It also seeks to showcase the many effective interventions designed to boost digital skills, while giving a local voice to the EU debate around the future of work at the same time.” The success of Berlin and other cities across EU member states proves that there are benefits to the digital shift caused by the pandemic: businesses will no longer struggle to conduct work from peripheral regions, and both consumers and businesses have a better knowledge and understanding of digital tools. 

In contrast to Germany’s tech success story during the pandemic, a report from OECD revealed the devastating nature of the digital infrastructure challenges in the Western Balkans. The biggest issues in this region consisted of the low digitalization of households and the limited number of enterprises that were able to employ teleworking. The inability to shift to teleworking and digital work processes meant that businesses were far likelier to experience labor shortages caused by movement restrictions. Now that the pandemic has exposed the digital divide and the need for change, the European Union can actively begin improving digitalization within their Eastern European member states. 

Role of the EU 

The World Bank’s report on the digital dilemma in Europe reveals that there are three key goals for Europe’s digital future: “competitiveness, market inclusion of small and young firms, and geographic cohesion.” The report explains that for the European Union to achieve these goals they must better invest in the three types of digital technology, which are transactional, informational, and operational. Taking this information into account, the EU must now help member states including Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania, to properly invest in technology creation and adoption. The report also details the distinction between the three most prominent digital technologies: transactional, informational, and operational. According to the World Bank, transactional technologies, mostly e-commerce related, are the only ones truly capable of achieving the European Union’s goals, due to their ability to bring together all forms of the digital sector. 

Bridging the divide between rural and urban areas is key to promoting technological development. Romania’s cities, such as Bucharest, have much higher rates of transactional technology initiatives compared with more rural areas where digitalization barely plays a role in local firms. Specifically targeting rural regions will also benefit the member state as a whole, as it will allow greater investment and collaboration between regions. 

The European Union should also work to promote telecommunication policies (policy concerned with the economic regulation of interstate as well as international communication, across the broader region). One way for Eastern European countries to improve digitalization is by driving competition through tech creation, but to do this they need to establish an institutional and legal environment that is ideal for tech development and can guarantee them the support of both public and private investors. Therefore promoting telecommunications policies is the quickest and most effective way to establish stability and legitimacy, thus drawing in external support. Ideally, states such as Poland and Bulgaria would create a telecommunications market with lower costs, greater competition, and a more diverse array of services provided. 

The Success of Estonia 

Despite many Eastern European member states being decades behind in regards to their Western peers, one nation stands out as an anomaly and example of the success of digitalization. Estonia, a former Soviet republic, has achieved the unthinkable. The nation state has achieved unprecedented digital success thanks to a variety of factors, and serves as a model for all other European Union member states.

The origins of Estonia’s digital success can be traced back to the early nineties when a group of amateur politicians developed a public digital architecture that specifically targeted IT. The goal was to promote IT as a public skill that would improve socio-economic skills nationwide. Estonia built up their digital network through the creation of small networks with dedicated government workers and support from the private sector. The collaboration between both public and private sector proved tremendously in creating a digital state which collaborated effectively. Since all sectors were being digitized at the same time, they were able to rely on each other for support and collaboration, such as the simultaneous development of cybersecurity alongside the online banking sector. Much of Estonia’s success can be attributed to its young politicians who possessed the energy and drive to completely rebuild Estonia, the close networks already in place, and their decision to digitize right as the internet was entering the mainstream world. However, there are still aspects of Estonia’s success story that other countries can copy. 

Estonia focused on convincing their citizens of the benefits of digitalization early on by creating digitization projects specifically designed to make their citizens' lives easier; this helped to convince skeptics and united the population. The digital Estonian ID card was launched in 2002 with a digital signature in place to allow citizens to make legally-binding decisions remotely and use their digital signature to easily sign documents. When asked about his country’s success, Chief Information Officer of Estonia, Siim Sikkut, stated that “ Digital leadership needs to be continuous across different administrations. This also involves a deeper understanding of the need to educate not just the wider society, but also government officials behind the transformation.” He also stressed the importance of creating a streamlined and efficient system: “one of the most important factors that helped streamline the government structures, authorities and databases is  the once-only-principle which exists to this day. This means that any type of data related to an individual can only be collected by one specific institution, thereby eliminating duplicate data and bureaucracy.” Studying the principle factors behind Estonia’s success reveals that other Eastern European countries must first focus on creating transactional technologies that better their citizens' lives through transparent, cooperative, and efficient digital systems. 

The EU’s Future in Eastern Europe

Closing the digital divide between East and West also begs the question: What would a digitally united and equal European Union look like? There are a multitude of ways in which digital cooperation would improve the EU’s status both on the continent and internationally. The end of the digital divide would help unite EU member states and promote the overall stability and success of the European Union. It would ease the burden felt by states such as Germany, Finland, and Estonia, who currently possess strong digitized systems, and allow then to confidently invest in the CEE countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). The CEE countries do not possess the same economic power and stability of the ‘Big Four (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) who do not need to rely on digital innovation efforts to promote their economies and international investment. However, greater digital innovation would most certainly draw in international investment which would strengthen Eastern European member states and the EU by extension. 

The  European Union is considered by many to be the leader in data privacy regulation. The institution has set precedents through its legislation that have created global benchmarks through privacy regulation. Despite angering many American tech companies through their strict enforcement of data protection legislation, the EU has remained firm even in the face of outlash from Google over the Digital Markets Act which prevents Google and Apple from collecting data from different services to offer targeted ads without users’ consent.  By demanding data protection of their member states and the outside world, the EU has been able to shape the global standard through its creation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which has become the de facto global network. However, implementing greater digitization efforts in Eastern Europe would also provide the EU to ensure that their data protection regulations are more deeply ingrained throughout the continent and provide more opportunities to demonstrate the norm of implementing data privacy regulations in states with newly developing technologies. 

The past decade has severely weakened the European Union. Brexit, a damaged relationship with the US, China’s growing desire for tech domination, and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has damaged the EU’s internal and external reputation as a strong and powerful institution, but by solving the digital divide the EU would show the world the strength of their initiatives and their dedication to improving access to technology for citizens across all member states. Closing the digital divide does more than benefit the CEE countries, it also allows the EU the chance to redefine itself in the face of Russian aggression, Chinese domination, and American tech companies' anger over data privacy regulations.

The Illiberal West: A New Era for Central and Eastern Europe

In 1989, on the eve of the Cold War’s final chapter, Francis Fukuyama suggested that the world had come face to face with the ‘end of history’ and that the fundamental ideology behind liberal democracy would henceforth be free of any obstacles to global domination. It has become somewhat of a cliché to lambast his theory, but reflecting upon it is important as it succinctly captures the zeitgeist of the post-Cold War era. Many in the West did, and still do, believe that liberal democracy is the single most successful socio-political system; a system which was bestowed upon the people of Central and Eastern Europe in a shared victory over authoritarian Communism between 1989 and 1991. This is part of the reason why liberal democracy’s contemporary losses in the region, notably to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, are often received as a shock. While self-proclaimed illiberal nationalists now lead Hungary and Poland, the sentiment they harness is palpable across almost all the post-Communist states which moved to integrate with Western Europe, indicating a broad regional phenomenon. There are various theories as to why these nations are on their current path, but two principal factors stand above the rest: demographic anxiety and a rejection of what European and Western identity has come to mean.

First, it should be noted that economic decline has not played a significant part in this particular rise of illiberal nationalist sentiment, which makes the root factors of the region’s recent political shift distinct from theories explaining Western Europe’s lurch to the right. Poland, especially, has seen exponential economic growth for the past 26 years, and even managed to escape recession during the 2008 crisis. With GDP per capita growing by 6% on average over the past 20 years, it would be difficult to argue that the populace is suffering from economic grievance. This goes without mentioning that the region actually boasts high income equality, even relative to Western Europe. While Hungary has experienced some economic hardship, such as recession around 2008, the rise in illiberal thought across the region is largely unexplained by economic decline.

To fully understand Central and Eastern Europe in the decades following the end of the Cold War, one must understand its demographics. The Economist estimates that around 18 million people, or 6% of Central and Eastern Europe’s population, have left the region since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unlike past revolutions, in which the losers form the emigrate population, the end of Communism presented a situation in which liberal minded citizens, the winners, were the ones to depart in mass numbers. This alone has made a significant political and psychological impact on the remaining populations, but the demographic issues do not end there. The area also suffers from an incredibly low fertility rate, with the regional average coming out to a rate of about 1.4 children per a woman (the replacement rate, or the rate at which a population maintains its size, is 2 children per woman). This means that not only has the Central and Eastern Europe lost millions due to emigration, but emigrants are also not being replaced. In other words, the region is growing older and shrinking.

With these numbers in mind, it may be easier to imagine why the surge in numbers of migrants arriving in Europe, starting around 2013 and peaking in 2015, was seen by many as a threat to national survival. While almost none of the migrants arriving in Europe aspire to immigrate to post-Communist states, there was widespread fear that they would, and that nations in the region would be unable to assimilate them or preserve their national identity due to the dire demographic situation. This emerged as a driving factor in the popularity of right wing and nationalist political forces. Illiberalism is closely related to this, as skepticism in the liberal model had already begun due to the demographic impacts integration with the West had on Central and Eastern Europe. However, the perceived failure of Western European nations, seen as liberal role models, to properly deal with the migrant crisis significantly increased support for the rejection of liberal democracy, and married the sentiment to the political right.

This rejection of Western European judgment is something that has been festering for quite some time. Since the end of the Cold War, the region has striven to imitate the West and become a part of the Western world in almost every way. Governments in the region therefore allowed judgements according to Western standards, and the remaining populace often felt as though they were in some ways losers for having not left for the ‘promised land’ further west of them. However, the reality is that post-Communist Europe is very different from the rest of the continent. Social values are an important example, as the region is very much more socially traditional than its western neighbors, and while imitating God-loving Reaganite America was appealing in decades past, the West has since changed. Much of Western European and American society now embrace secularism, LGBT rights, cultural diversity, and liberal social values in general. Illiberal movements in Central and Eastern Europe are a response to this, both in terms of rejecting the idea that the region should imitate nations with different values than them, and that it should be the submissive partner in the imitation game. More specifically, they believe that roles should be reversed, and that traditional Central and Eastern Europe is, in fact, the real Europe that should be imitated across the West. This is elegantly expressed in a quote from one of Viktor Orbán’s 2017 speeches, in which he proclaims, "Twenty-seven years ago here in Central Europe we believed that Europe was our future; today we feel that we are the future of Europe.”

However, the differences between East and West go both ways, and there are some issues with spreading Hungary and Poland’s right-wing illiberal model to the rest of the continent. Most importantly is the fact that Orbán and Kaczyński are selling a model designed to prevent ethnic and cultural diversity, rather than to deal with an already diverse population. Despite this, it is very unlikely that European-wide expansion will be given up on easily. Some illiberal leaders, notably Viktor Orbán, seem to understand that the best way to remain in power is to secure the regions and institutions of which they are a part. As Orbán’s Fidesz party constitutes an important member of the largest parliamentary group in the European Union, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), it is likely that the European Parliament will manifest as an important battleground in this struggle. More specifically, the battle over the ‘soul’ of the broader European center-right will be crucial, as a center-right more sympathetic to right-wing populist and illiberal movements could greatly shift the balance of political influence in favor of post-Communist states.

Broader strategic developments are also important to note when regarding the future of this region, especially as Chinese funds increasingly make their way into the scene. As a wealthy and authoritarian power, China’s rise may provide an opportunity for illiberal nations to reduce their reliance on Western Europe and the United States. Although some countries, such as Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria, express sympathy towards Russia, the area’s traditional influencer is unlikely to regain significant inroads in the region due to financial constraints, as well as historical grievances with important local actors, notably Poland and Romania.

If China does signal greater interest in Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States may need to consider more dynamic responses in order to retain their level of strategic influence. This could take the form of certain concessions, such as reduced criticism of the region’s disregard for “European values”, of which both Poland and Hungary have been accused in the form of article 7 procedures filed against them by the European Parliament. This would resemble treatment towards Ukraine, or Saudi Arabia, which are not liberal democracies yet retain Western strategic support. Another possible strategy is an aim at the deeper roots behind this issue - demographics. Financial and political support for pro-natalist policies in the area could significantly boost the image of Western Europe and the United States in the eyes of the local population, along with a reduction of the demographic anxiety playing a significant part in this phenomenon.

History has come back to post-Communist Europe with a vengeance. This is true both in Fukuyama’s terms, but also as regarding the essence and flavor of the illiberal revolution taking place there. While Poland, Hungary, and other nations in the region have their differences, they are united in a common experience of demographic devastation, a search for identity, and fear in a rapidly changing world. This has lead to a rejection, in various degrees, of the liberal democratic model and the definition of Western identity in terms of social liberalism. This does not mean that Central and Eastern Europe has necessarily been “lost”, especially if Western European and American policymakers begin to demonstrate an understanding of the root causes of these developments, and adapt to them accordingly. However, they should also understand that the region is unlikely to return to its immediate post-Cold War state of mind, and this is ultimately a new era for Central and Eastern Europe.