Open Door No 13 1990s ##TOP##
During the mid-1980s the strength and cohesion of the Warsaw Pact, which had served as the main institution rivaling NATO, began to deteriorate. By 1989 the Soviet Union was unable to stem the democratic and nationalist movements which were rapidly gaining ground. Poland held multiparty elections in June 1989 that ousted the Soviet allied Polish Workers' Party and the peaceful opening of the Berlin Wall that November symbolized the end of the Warsaw Pact as a way of enforcing Soviet control. The fall of the Berlin Wall is recognized to be the end of the Cold War and ushered in a new period for Europe and NATO enlargement.[20]
Open Door No 13 1990s
While the other Visegrád members were invited to join NATO at its 1997 Madrid summit, Slovakia was excluded based on what several members considered undemocratic actions by nationalist Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar.[52] Romania and Slovenia were both considered for invitation in 1997, and each had the backing of a prominent NATO member, France and Italy respectively, but support for this enlargement was not unanimous between members, nor within individual governments, including in the US Congress.[53] In an open letter to US President Bill Clinton, more than forty foreign policy experts including Bill Bradley, Sam Nunn, Gary Hart, Paul Nitze, and Robert McNamara expressed their concerns about NATO expansion as both expensive and unnecessary given the lack of an external threat from Russia at that time.[54] Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic officially joined NATO in March 1999.[55]
As NATO Secretary General Willy Claes noted, the 1995 study did not specify the "who or when,"[87] though it discussed how the then newly formed Partnership for Peace and North Atlantic Cooperation Council could assist in the enlargement process,[88] and noted that on-going territorial disputes could be an issue for whether a country was invited.[89] At the 1997 Madrid summit, the heads of state of NATO issued the "Madrid Declaration on Euro-Atlantic Security and Cooperation" which invited three Central European countries to join the alliance, out of the twelve that had at that point requested to join, laying out a path for others to follow.[85] The text of Article 10 was the origin for the April 1999 statement of a "NATO open door policy".[90]
Russia's military actions in Ukraine, first in 2014 and later in 2022, have caused most major political parties in Sweden to at least re-evaluate their positions on NATO membership, and many moved to support Swedish membership. The Centre Party, for example, was officially opposed to NATO membership until September 2015, when party leadership under Annie Lööf announced that they would motion to change the party policy to push for Sweden to join NATO at their next party conference. The Christian Democrats likewise voted to support NATO membership at their October 2015 party meeting.[168] The center-right Moderate Party and center-left Liberal Party have both generally supported NATO membership since the end of the Cold War, with the Moderates even making it their top election pledge in 2022.[169][170] When the eurosceptic nationalist Sweden Democrats adjusted their stance in December 2020 to allow for NATO membership if coordinated with neighboring Finland, a majority of the members of the Swedish Riksdag for the first time belonged to parties that were open to NATO membership,[171] and a motion to allow for future NATO membership passed the parliament that month by 204 votes to 145.[172][173][174]
On 8 June 2017, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed a law making integration with NATO a foreign policy priority,[223] and Poroshenko announced the next month that he would seek the opening of negotiations on a Membership Action Plan with NATO,[224] which recognized Ukraine as an aspirant country by March 2018.[225] On 20 September 2018, the Ukrainian parliament approved amendments to the constitution that would make the accession of the country to NATO and the EU a central goal and the main foreign policy objective.[226]
Russia, Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet alternative military alliance. Azerbaijan was a member of the CSTO but has committed to a policy of neutrality since 1999.[234] In 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin floated the idea of Russia potentially joining NATO.[235] However these prospects went nowhere and he began developing anti-NATO sentiment and openly holds hostile views towards NATO today.[236] In 2009, Russian envoy Dmitry Rogozin did not rule out joining NATO at some point, but stated that Russia was currently more interested in leading a coalition as a great power.[237]
Membership of Austria in the European Union (or its predecessor organizations) was controversial due to the Austrian commitment to neutrality. Austria only joined in 1995, together with two Nordic countries that had also declared their neutrality in the Cold War (Sweden and Finland). Austria joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1995, and participates in NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The Austrian military also participates in the United Nations peacekeeping operations and has deployments in several countries as of 2022[update], including Kosovo, Lebanon, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it has led the EUFOR mission there since 2009.[239] Several politicians from the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), including Andreas Khol, the 2016 presidential nominee, have argued in favor of NATO membership for Austria in light of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine,[240] and Chancellor from 2000 to 2007, Wolfgang Schüssel and his defense minister, Werner Fasslabend, both of the ÖVP, supported NATO membership as part of European integration during their tenure.[241] Current Chancellor Karl Nehammer, however, has rejected the idea of reopening Austria's neutrality and membership is not widely popular with the Austrian public.[242] According to a survey in May 2022 by the Austria Press Agency, only 14% of Austrians surveyed supported joining NATO, while 75% were opposed.[243]
The process for choosing traders (two up to 2003, one since 2009) has remained the same. Starting with the highest winner, the host asks traders if they wanted to trade in everything they had won to that point for a chance to choose one of three numbered doors on the stage. The process continued until a trader agreed to play; up to 2003, the procedure continued until a second trader was chosen. In two-player games until 2003, the trader who was the bigger winner earned first choice of the doors, and the other trader then chose from the remaining two.
Each of the doors conceals either a prize package of some sort, or a cash award hidden inside a prop such as a bank vault, piggy bank, or blank check. On occasion, a door containing an all-cash prize is opened before the traders make their choices, but the amount of the prize is not revealed. Frequently but not always, the value of the "Low" Door (the lowest-valued door) is less than the value of the player's original winnings, while the "Medium" Door's value is at least $1,000 more than the player's traded winnings.
When the Big Deal is not behind the selected door, one of the non-Big Deal doors is opened first, then the chosen door, with the Big Deal revealed last, although second on rare occasions. If that occurs, the contestant is told they'll still get something great. If the Big Deal door is selected, the other two doors are usually revealed first, although on rare occasions, the Big Deal door has been revealed second, after one of the other two doors (usually the "Medium" door) is revealed.
The Big Deal prize is usually the most extravagant on each episode, and is often a car, a vacation with first-class accommodations, or a collection of high-value furniture/appliances. On occasion, the Big Deal consists of one of the all-cash prizes mentioned above; at other times, a cash bonus is added to the prizes in the Big Deal to bring the total up to the announced value. On other occasions, the prize consists of "Everything in the Big Deal," which awards the cash/merchandise behind all three doors to the trader who chooses it.
Traders who have won zonks become eligible for the Big Deal only if not enough winners of actual cash/prizes volunteer to play. The Big Deal is the only time during the show in which participants are guaranteed to receive a genuine prize, although that prize could always be far less in value than the prize(s) the contestant traded away. (There was a deliberately placed Zonk in a door during the pilot episode, which was not chosen, but it has never been allowed in a legal episode for broadcast.)
From 2012 to 2016 of the Brady version, the Super Deal was offered as a limited event (usually for a week of shows promoted as "Super Deal Week") and was not played regularly. The show designated one or two weeks of episodes, typically airing during a special event (e.g., the 500th episode, 50th anniversary of franchise, etc.). In this version, the top cash prize was $50,000 while the other two cash prizes were $1,000 and $2,000. In addition, instead of using mini-doors, the cash amounts were hidden in three large colored envelopes of red, green, and blue, respectively referred by Brady as ruby, emerald, and sapphire.
For season premiere weeks in 2015 and 2016 of the Brady version, Big Deal of the Day winners had an opportunity to win every non-zonk, non-cash prize from that day's episode as a "Mega-Deal". Prior to the start of the Big Deal, the contestant picked both a Big Deal curtain and one of seven Mega Deal cards (reduced by one for each day that the Mega Deal was not won that week). Unlike the Super Deal, the contestant does not risk their winnings in the Mega Deal. Only if the contestant won the Big Deal would the contestant's card be revealed. If the card was the Mega Deal, they won every non-zonk, non-cash prize on the show that day. Regardless, at the end of the Big Deal, whichever door was chosen was the contestant's to keep. 041b061a72