President Bush’s plan to build a missile-defense shield in Europe won approval from NATO at yesterday’s Bucharest summit meetings, marking an important victory for the U.S. agenda and for American hopes of getting Moscow to ease its opposition. But the summit balked at U.S. pressure to start an admission process for Ukraine and Georgia as premature and liable to raise tensions with Russia.

The planned ballistic missile-defense system involves 10 interceptor missiles based in Poland and a tracking radar site in the Czech Republic. Poland and the Czech Republic are pleased to announce the completion of negotiations on a missile defense agreement,” says a joint statement by the two countries, issued on the fringes of the NATO summit in Bucharest (3 April).

In endorsing the project, a statement by the 26 nations alliance said that the system “will be linked to other US missile defense facilities in Europe and the US.” In addition according to NATO’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the alliance will “develop options for a comprehensive missile defense architecture to extend coverage to all ally territory and population not otherwise covered by the US system.” These areas – including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania – would not be protected by the missile shield as currently planned. In addition, plans are under discussion about how a NATO-focused network of defenses against short-and-medium-range missiles could be “bolted onto” the planned U.S. shield supposed to operate against long-range attacks.

The U.S. was less successful in its bid to gain NATO admission for the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. The alliance moved to admit Croatia and Albania, but Germany and France led opposition to Bush’s push to expand the alliance into Georgia and Ukraine with a “membership action plan (MAP),” arguing that such a move would unduly provoke Russia, which has vehemently opposed the idea. Most NATO governments also take the view that both these countries have internal troubles – separatism in Georgia, a deep split about Russia in Ukraine – that could become problematical if they were put officially on track to NATO membership.

The German newspaper Spiegel notes that Moscow has made it clear that it views any enlargement of NATO to its borders as a threat; in addition, the notion of former Soviet republics joining the alliance is particularly sensitive. Bush made a determined push on this issue at the summit, which was his last NATO session as President, and some allied leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seemed surprised, and even upset, that Bush took such a hard line, refusing to agree to a compromise statement that supported Georgia and Ukraine’s prospects for membership at some future date.

This outcome will only prove a temporary reprieve for Moscow. An analysis by Stratfor, the online intelligence website, noted that Germany and France did not oppose Georgian and Ukrainian membership per se. Instead, they simply argued that the two states had yet to meet the technical criteria to warrant an MAP. “The primary concern of Western European states is not alliance expansion, but alliance coherence. They are guided in their logic in no small way by whether the proposed NATO member is also a serious candidate for EU membership. For example, France and Germany were convinced that the Baltic states and the Balkan countries were reasonable candidates, but that Ukraine and Georgia are too far afield,” Stratfor said.

For now, anyway. Paris and Berlin both explicitly noted that membership for Ukraine and Georgia was simply a matter of time. Support for stronger NATO engagement for both states is strong and growing, just not strong enough to justify a fast-track for membership at this time.

Afghanistan was also a major focus of the summit in Bucharest. France confirmed that it will add at least 800 troops to its current force in NATO’s Afghan mission. “These troops will meet Canada’s requirement for a partner in the south that will allow Canada, with the necessary contributions also in terms of equipment — to extend its mission in Afghanistan until 2011,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. The French reinforcement effort was put through by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has indicated that he wants France to fully reintegrate with NATO this year. But in the face of domestic opposition, Paris chose to deploy its troops to the combat theater in eastern Afghanistan to fight Taliban forces crossing from Pakistan. Their arrival will free U.S. troops to move south to Kandahar, the main war zone, where Canadian, British and Dutch troops are bearing the brunt of the fighting.

Related Posts:

Faraway Afghanistan Brings Home Up-Close NATO Tensions, 29 February 2008
Medvedev Warns Against NATO Expansion Eastward, 25 March 2008
NATO Expected to Meet Canada’s Conditions in Afghanistan, 26 March 2008

See Also:

Germany Blocks ex-Soviets Nato Entry,
Financial Times, 1 April 2008
France Offers Troops to Bolster NATO Mission,
RadioFreeEurope, 3 April 2008
Bush Wins NATO Backing on European Missile Shield,
New York Times, 4 April 2008
NATO Backs Bush’s Missile Defense System,
Boston Globe, 4 April 2008
Allies Upset as Bush Moves off NATO Script,
International Herald Tribune, 2 April 2008
‘NATO is not a Land-Grabbing Monster’,
Der Spiegel, 2 April 2008

Tags: Bucharest, Georgia, missile-defense shield, NATO, Ukraine, United States

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Defense, European Affairs, NATO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.