A Cause in the Caucasus

Abstract

In December 2007, Damon wilson returned to the White House to take a position as senior director for Europe in the National Security Council of George W. Bush. Having spent the previous year in Iraq, Wilson was back working on an issue he was passionate about: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) enlargement. Prior service in the State Department, the NATO secretary general’s office, and the White House gave Wilson familiarity with Euro-Atlantic divisions on the subject. Thrust into preparation for the forthcoming NATO summit in Bucharest, he was surprised that no internal policy process had yet generated a formal presidential decision on whether the United States was willing to offer a path to NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Both states underwent “color revolutions” that saw fraudulent election results overturned and new elections sweep dynamic Westernizing leaders into power, events many Russian officials viewed as Western-fomented coups. Three years later in 2007, things were not looking so positive in either state. In Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili’s government had violently suppressed antigovernment demonstrations a few weeks earlier, while Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership had descended into internal factionalism. Wilson, however, knew how strong the president’s instincts were on support for fledgling young democracies in post-Soviet space. Bush had announced his commitment at the outset of his presidency in a speech at Warsaw University where he declared: “No more Munichs, no more Yaltas.” During Bush’s tenure, NATO had admitted seven new member states, including the Baltic Republics, tacitly acknowledged as part of the Soviet Union at Yalta in 1945. Approaching his last NATO summit, Bush had a legacy opportunity to push enlargement farther east and south, to large strategic territories that were part of the original Soviet Union. Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates were skeptical but others such as U.S. ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland, were supportive. After a “deep dive” into the question by White House staff, Bush decided in late February that the United States should mobilize all its diplomatic power to offer a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a first step toward NATO membership, to both Georgia and Ukraine at Bucharest.