Below The Beltway

President Bush is in Ukraine today and endorsed the idea of expanding NATO to include both Ukraine and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia:

KIEV, Ukraine, April 1 — President Bush championed expansion of NATO further into the former Soviet Union on Tuesday and declared that Russia “will not have a veto” over the alliance’s decision this week about whether to put Ukraine and Georgia on a path to membership.

Appearing alongside President Viktor Yushchenko, Bush portrayed NATO membership for the two former Soviet republics as part of a new security architecture for Europe and not a threat to Moscow, which has threatened to target missiles against its former territories if they join. Bush rejected Russian suggestions that he soft-pedal the issue in exchange for a deal on missile defense or Afghanistan.

“I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAPs,” he said, referring to “membership action plans,” a process for NATO candidates. “And there’s no tradeoffs. Period. And I told that to President Putin.” Recounting a recent telephone conversation, Bush said he told Russia’s Vladimir Putin: “You shouldn’t fear that, Mr. President. After all, NATO is an organization that is peaceful.”

The problem with the idea, though, is two-fold.

First, Ukraine isn’t just another former Soviet Republic:

Ukraine, in particular, has historically been a much more central part of the Russian sense of empire, which is why both nations consider this a critical moment in their mutual history. Yushchenko, the Western-oriented banker who was elected president after leading the Orange Revolution that toppled a pro-Russian government in late 2004, stressed that Ukraine needs NATO to ensure its final break from Moscow.

It was in Ukraine, moreover, that Christianity was first brought to the forebearers of the Russian nation.

The second part, as Stephen Green points out, is that it’s entirely unclear what the point of the expansion, or even NATO itself, is at this point:

NATO used to mean something. It used to do something. Namely: defend Western Europe from a Soviet attack. If Russian tanks ever came streaming across the North German Plain, we had a plan in place to deal with it. We had REFORGER sites up and down Germany, where pre-positioned equipment waited for our flown-in soldiers to “mate up” and drive (hopefully) eastward into battle. We had transport ships and naval escorts nearly at the ready to bring in more troops and fresh supplies. We kept nuclear subs in place to slow the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet, surging out of bases on the Kola peninsula. We even, Whomever help us, had nukes trained on the enemy. Most importantly, we trained — and trained hard — with our West German and British allies on the actual terrain we’d be forced to defend.

In other words, NATO had a plan.

(…)

[I]f Russia were to attack Ukraine, what would we do? Lithuania? How about even Poland, or eastern Germany? Do we have a plan? Have we trained with the Poles? Do we have units tasked to the defense of the roads leading into Warsaw?

Well, no.

NATO isn’t a defensive alliance anymore. It’s a club. It’s a very nice club of very nice countries, and it even has a very nice clubhouse — er, headquarters — in Belgium. But it’s an alliance without a plan, and without even a real enemy.

And what happens if ethnic tensions flare up in the former USSR ? What if the Russian population of Ukraine wants to secede ? Do we have a plan for that one ? I’m guessing not.

There are times when I think that NATO envisions itself as becoming some kind of rival to the United Nations — an international organization that actually accomplishes something. There have even been suggestions over the years of expanding NATO beyond Europe to nations like Japan and South Korea. And one can easily see NATO, someday, becoming the West’s primary military force in the War against Islamic Terrorism or a confrontation with China, but we haven’t gotten that far yet.

And, I’m guessing, nobody has a plan for how to get there either.

So, if Ukraine comes in, in the course of two decades, we’ve moved the tripwire for confrontation with Russia from the Elba River to the very border of Russia itself. Something tells me we’ll be second-guessing that decision at some point.