In a little more than a month from now, President Bush will head to Bucharest, Romania for a major NATO summit. The gathering is being billed as a potential “make-or-break” moment for the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose lackluster performance in southern Afghanistan has been a source of increasing tension within the alliance. But South Asia won’t be the only thing on the agenda at Bucharest. The summit will also tackle the potentially divisive question of how much, and how fast, NATO should expand. Although three longstanding NATO aspirants–Albania, Macedonia, and Croatia–are widely expected to secure invitations to join the alliance this April, the bigger test case is likely to be Ukraine and Georgia, both of which are petitioning NATO for a “Membership Action Plan,” or MAP, at the summit. Getting a MAP is no guarantee of future NATO membership for Ukraine or Georgia; on the contrary, it’s just an aid package that will help these countries’ democratically-elected governments tackle the various political, economic, and security reforms that, if successfully implemented, will help them qualify for NATO membership down the line. The United States and most of its major allies are in favor of offering a MAP to Ukraine and Georgia, but several European states–most notably Germany–are still iffy. Their opposition isn’t substantive: rather, they are frightened first and foremost about pissing off Russia, which is loathe to see a closer relationship between NATO and its former satellites. Despite Moscow’s saber rattling, a source tells the WEEKLY STANDARD that the vote count among NATO member states has gotten more favorable for Georgia and Ukraine in the past few weeks. What’s needed now is a strong diplomatic push on the part of the Bush administration–which, not so coincidentally, is precisely what Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, and a bipartisan, bicameral group of Senators and Congressman urge Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to do, in a letter they sent to Foggy Bottom yesterday. Here’s the excerpt:
