Conclusion

a. The Study takes NATO enlargement a major step closer to implementation. It lays out concrete plans in a number of areas, resolves a multitude of questions, and skillfully navigates past a number of traps which lie in waiting for NATO enlargement – traps into which many other expansionists have fallen.

b. In four of its major areas, the Study still falls into traps, because its plans fall short of the results that it mandates for them: (1) The streamlining of procedures is not enough to spare NATO a loss of effectiveness. (2) Too many of the West's burdens of adjustment are off-loaded onto the shoulders of the Easterners whose societies are already overstrained. (3) The intended guarantees against vetoes of later entrants do not provide much real protection. (4) The ideas on cooperation with Russia are too weak to prevent the isolation of Russia. Every one of these traps portends tremendous damage: a weaker NATO, a collapse of hope in some Eastern countries, new dividing lines, a wholesale anti-Western reaction in Russia. They could turn NATO enlargement from a virtue into a vice.

c. The main steps out of these traps are, respectively:

1. A further streamlining of decision-making, acknowledging the authority of the Council to act in the last resort without consensus and, for decisions specifically for coalitions of the willing, developing flexible procedures for normal functioning short of consensus.

2. An interactive schedule of joining while in the process of meeting standards; procedures for reversion to associate member status if necessary.

3. A protocol admitting in principle of the entire group of OSCE countries, and establishing with veto-free procedures for following up and admitting the individual countries in practice.

4. An organic link between Russia and NAC discussions; an end to old prejudices against agreeing with Russia's position on anything.

(See sections 1.c., 2.c., 3.c. and 4.c. above for details on these steps.)

With these steps, NATO can climb all the way out of traps and emerge into the clear open air, where its enlargement will benefit all sides. Then NATO will be able to move freely on concrete national protocols of accession.

These steps are in a sense just natural extensions of the steps the NATO Study has already taken, logical conclusions to the requirements it has posed. Still, habit resists change, so much so that the progress in area (1) has been disguised as a reaffirmation of the status quo. NATO will arrive sooner or later at these steps, by following the path it has embarked upon; but not without effort. Its arrival will be timely, avoiding further unnecessary crises, if it asks what more is needed to make good on its goals in enlargement and if it pursues solutions commensurate with the stakes. Its follow-on planning should aim at no less.