Are enlargement and the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme still effective tools for NATO in spreading democracy? And what can we expect in this sense from the upcoming NATO Summit in Bucharest in April?
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO Secretary General / © NATO
Since the break-up of the Warsaw Pact in the early nineties, NATO has expanded to include ten new members, mostly in parallel with EU enlargement.
While current aspiring members – Albania, Croatia and Macedonia – and countries that aspire to engage in the Membership Action Plan (MAP) – Georgia and Ukraine – are reforming their societies and democratising their defence structures, several other PfP members do not take the EU and NATO message of “Western style” democracy for granted anymore.
Since NATO is not in the business of democratic regime change, but works through gradual reform assistance, options to do so effectively need to be reviewed.
In this Comment article Jos Boonstra explores the challenges and opportunities facing both NATO and the countries that hope to join the organisation in the years ahead.