NATO, Bush and Europe

April 3rd, 2008 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags:
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“President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies,” the New York Times reports. The reality of the matter is that Bush is almost done, he only has 6 months left in office (give or take), and Europe knows it.

In other words, it’s unlikely that European countries will give Bush what he wants if they don’t agree with him completely. And that’s the case when it comes to an expansion of NATO. Western Europe doesn’t want to expand NATO at this point in time, Bush does. The result: Bush can lobby all he wants, but it won’t make a difference.

I’ve said before that I don’t believe that these countries should be included, so I think it’s right for the rest of NATO to tell Bush ‘not gonna happen.’ Georgia and the Ukraine aren’t exactly the most modern countries in Europe. There’s no need for them to join NATO right now. It’s better to keep NATO small but effective, than big and ineffective.

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