A short flash of brilliance on the part of Robert Gates.
It's been my position from the onset of this conflict...and before. All the way back to bringing Romania and Bulgaria into the "Alliance" circa 2003.
Poland and the Baltics had some basis in culture and proximity. But the surge in NATO membership we experienced under the GW Bush administration made no sense at all. Our sons are likely to have cause to curse them for it.
You might find this interesting.....during a conversation recently at Atlantic Council I believe..
“NATO’s policy for defense is one of reinforcement in a crisis, not permanent forward deterrence as it was during the Cold War.... Nato enlargement advocates have been ‘driving’ the ‘NATO Agenda’ for two decades in Washington, D.C. and Brussels and will not be keen to close the “open door”.
NATO enlargement was not so much the first round (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic)—but rather a consequent logic of an “open door” that came with it. .....Enlargement advocates can rightly point out that the second round—to include the three Baltic countries along with Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria—also did not have as dramatic an impact on Russia as many opponents feared it would.
‘the open door approach’......... emphasized ‘principles’ and ‘idealism’ rather than hard geographic and military foundations.
....The process thus inevitably put NATO activity deep into Russia’s long-stated areas of vital interests (as Moscow saw it) and was, thus, eventually destabilizing. .......Many advocates of enlargement ‘underestimated’, and continue to’ misunderstand ‘the strategic implications of their “open door” agenda for NATO—culminating in “.......a dangerous 2008 declaration from NATO that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance”......
Russians genuinely no longer trust NATO—and this is not just a Putin problem—it is a view widely held in the country..... Russians were continually told that as NATO was purely a defensive alliance, it would not threaten anyone. ...............Yet just days after the first round was completed in 1999, the Russians saw NATO commence its air war against their long-time friends the Serbs....... NATO was fighting for a humanitarian mission and to promote stability in the Balkans. .........But the Russian position hardened then as they saw declarations of intent and missions for the alliance evolving beyond earlier promises—exacerbated further by NATO’s 2011 war in Libya.
Multiple American administrations led the charge on NATO enlargement while failing to consider that we were doing things deep in the backyard of a nuclear armed and increasingly nationalistic Russia that the United States would never for a minute tolerate in its own.
The real problem came in (2008) when the “United States pushed hard”.. within NATO for invitations to negotiate a “Membership Action Plan” for Ukraine and Georgia to begin the process of entering NATO. But The European allies expressed little interest and thus the approach failed. ......As a compromise, the United States gained shallow agreement for a NATO declaration that at (an unstated future time), Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.”...... This was a dangerous and irresponsible false promise as ‘there was no agreement in NATO to actually do this’..... In Ukraine, popular support for NATO membership was scant.
Several months later Russia invaded Georgia; negotiations on sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program were deeply complicated; pro-Moscow reformers in Ukraine consolidated their position; and Putin commenced on a sustained campaign to heighten long-standing Russian fears of NATO to help consolidate his power at home. Ukraine subsequently withdrew its NATO application and opted for a formal declaration of neutrality.
Today, Russia has put its deeply troubling foot down on eastern Ukraine to make clear its point that it would not tolerate a Ukraine that is a future NATO member or even an aspirant to be one. To be fair, Ukrainian membership has not been on NATO’s agenda in the last several years—which is in itself a tacit recognition that the 2008 declaration caused serious damage to the stated goals of NATO enlargement.
There is no way to understand today’s crisis in Ukraine without factoring for the difficult spot that the NATO alliance is now in due to its expansive open door policy.
The dilution of the enlargement process ‘away from’ geographic and military foundations into “an idealistic open door” is raising questions about the credibility of NATO’s collective defense commitments and is thus provoking concerns among new NATO members as to the validity of security guarantees.
Long-time advocates of NATO enlargement have rushed to light up this crisis like a Christmas wish list with some using it to push for policies they have long sought—permanent basing of American troops in Poland and the Baltic states, reintroducing the Bush-era missile defense plans, rushing Georgia into NATO, and providing Ukraine with significant military aid.........There is no appetite for these ideas within NATO because the allies well understand that these actions could risk provoking the very outcome in eastern Ukraine that they are trying to prevent—further Russian escalation.
Moscow has made clear that it believes Russia’s interests require that Ukraine be permanently neutral and with no aspirations towards NATO membership. Ironically, this is the easiest thing for the west to give up, since there is no intention of bringing Ukraine into NATO anyway.
The new government in Ukraine has signaled it plans to remain outside NATO, the German foreign minister says there is no future NATO membership for Ukraine, and the United States hints at a future in which Ukraine has long term aspirations for association with the European Union, but will not be a NATO member.
America and its allies also have their sovereign right to help Ukraine best understand its interests in the context of neutrality and not NATO membership.