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NATO and Ukraine are holding the Sixth Informal High Level consultations in Tallinn, Estonia. This comes roughly a month before the next meeting of foreign ministers where the question of a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine will be discussed.
In Tallinn, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will reportedly push NATO allies to accelerate Ukraine’s application by approving the MAP in December. This has been a priority for the Bush administration since at least the Bucharest Summit last spring. But one wonders if after this, there should be any illusions about the viability of this foreign policy goal.
If the MAP for Ukraine, and for that matter for Georgia, is not possible any time soon, then perhaps energy should be focused elsewhere. That is in fact the position put forth by Steven Pifer at The Brookings Institution (h/t Kyle Atwell at the Atlantic Review).
First, Pifers summarizes what happened at the summit in Bucharest, Romania and since then, like the Georgian-Russian war, etc. He then makes a realistic observation that there is no consensus on the MAP issue within NATO. Germany has essentially sided with Russia by explicitly opposing MAP before the December meeting even took place. As a result, Pifer calls for an alternative plan.
Seeking MAPs in December, only to fall short, would not be good for Ukraine or Georgia or for their long-term NATO prospects. Likewise, it would not be good for the U.S. government to make a big diplomatic push to persuade allies to agree to MAPs – and fail again, as it did in Bucharest.
Washington thus needs a Plan B. The U.S. government should begin consulting now with Kyiv and Tbilisi on goals for December short of MAPs.
This Plan B is outlined in four bulletin points in the original article, but more or less comes down to remaining engaged with Ukraine and Georgia without going as far as a Membership Action Plan.
And judging by the discussion on NATO enlargement we had here, for example under this post Debunking the case against NATO enlargement: a reply to the WPR op-ed or this one, Pifer’s argument may attract quite a few supporters. Whether it will affect the outgoing administration remains to be seen.
