NATO: The eastward expansion of NATO - full text
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At the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit in Bucharest (the capital of Romania) on April 2-4, NATO offered membership to Croatia and Albania while declining to promise eventual membership to the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. NATO postponed further discussion of Georgian and Ukrainian membership to a meeting of foreign ministers in December.
The former Yugoslav republic, Macedonia, saw its invitation to join NATO blocked by Greece, which had a northern province also called Macedonia.
Immediate context
According to The Economist of April 10, concerns over antagonising Russia, which objected to NATO's incorporation of former Soviet republics close to the Russian border, had thrown in doubt NATO's potential expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had reportedly stalled a US attempt to place Ukraine and Georgia on track for NATO membership, the Associated Press reported on April 3.
Europe's reliance on Russian energy imports was purported to have been a factor in ending a potential offer of membership to Georgia, according to a (US State Department-sponsored) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article dated April 2. Some commentators suggested that such a major eastward expansion of the western alliance was needlessly provocative to Russia. Russia had opposed eastward expansion of the alliance into the former countries of the Warsaw Pact since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Recently, Russia had also strongly opposed the stationing of NATO "anti-missile" missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact countries. The US authorities insisted that such a defensive shield would protect both the USA and Europe against missile attacks from "rogue" states such as Iran and North Korea. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin objected to having parts of the shield stationed so near Russia’s border, saying it posed a threat and disrupted global strategic balance.
Reaction and outlook
Newly appointed Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, inaugurated on May 7, was a close ally and protégé of Vladimir Putin and was expected to maintain a similar attitude to Putin. Despite NATO's apparent acceptance of Russia's concerns about Georgia, the New York Times of May 5 reported that Russian officials intended to support the separatist movements in the fractious Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and had sent additional troops to Abkhazia as "peacekeepers". However, any retaliatory moves by Georgia were thought likely to hinder rather than help its attempts to join NATO.
At a speech in Prague (the capital of the Czech Republic) on May 5, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoof Scheffer stressed the need for ongoing engagement with Russia, saying that he considered it to be "essential that we continue to involve Russia, both in the NATO-Russia Council and in US-Russian bilateral talks". He added that the US missile defence shield in eastern Europe could even prove beneficial to Russia, saying "in fact, we are ready to explore the potential linking of US, NATO, and Russian missile defence systems".
Speaking in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) on May 12, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko expressed confidence that Ukraine would eventually be admitted to NATO and that he would continue to work to gain support for membership from the people of Ukraine and the international community, the National Radio Company of Ukraine (NRCU) reported on its website.
Historical Background
After World War II, west European countries sought stability by entering into regional blocs such as the European Community, which promoted economic co-operation, and NATO for military co-operation. In the late 1940s, in response to the rising power of the communist Soviet Union, the UK, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France founded the Western European Union, which planned for common defence, integration of air defences, and joint command institutions.
The willingness of these "Brussels Treaty" powers to co-operate helped overcome US reluctance to participate in the nascent European security arrangements and talks between European countries, the USA, and Canada led to the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty by 12 countries in Washington DC on April 4, 1949.
NATO was the structure through which West Germany was rearmed, following its defeat in World War II. The organisation became central in creating a pluralistic security arrangement and political co-ordination of the western bloc during the Cold War with the communist countries of the eastern bloc.
The 12 founding members of NATO were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and the USA. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952 and West Germany was admitted in 1955. Spain became the 16th member in 1982. After the end of the Cold War, NATO countries adjusted the alliance’s policies and programmes in the face of a changing political landscape as the world became increasingly aware of the threat of global terrorism. NATO launched a 9,000-strong rapid reaction force designed for swift deployment to trouble spots anywhere in the world.In 1993 the USA proposed that preliminary military co-operation be extended to individual eastern European countries (the former eastern bloc) in a programmed called the "Partnerships for Peace" and Russia gave its support to the programme in 1994. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were formally admitted to NATO in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004.
Engagement with Russia continued during the 1990s. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov and NATO Secretary General Solana signed a historic agreement establishing the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council in 1997 and in 2002 the Rome Declaration inaugurating the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was signed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the USA.
Recent major NATO actions included the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and in 1999 a bombing campaign against military, infrastructure and civilian sites to stop Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. NATO also played a major role in peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan following the US-led invasion in 2001. However, the organisation also faced the challenge of mediating the differing opinions of national governments over the size and scale of the NATO forces needed to deal with the ongoing insurgency in the south of Afghanistan.
