CIAO DATE: 04/05

NATO Membership Is A Realistic Goal If Ukraine Shows Courage And Resolve

Abstract

For many Ukrainians today, the possibility of membership in NATO seems like a far-off dream. Yet ten years ago this January, when NATO Heads of State meeting in Brussels confirmed the Alliance′s openness to ìdemocratic states to our East,î the goal of NATO membership must have seemed just as unreal to the populations of other Eastern and Central European countries. Who could imagine that a Romania just beginning to recover from the political and economic devastation wrought by Ceausescu′s misrule could possibly meet the ìprinciples of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of lawî set forth in the North Atlantic Treaty? That NATO would cross Russia′s ëred line′ and invite the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join the Alliance? Or that the Alliance would accept the candidacy of Bulgaria, considered by many in the Soviet Union as the "Sixteenth Republic"? Yet all these nations, plus Slovakia and Slovenia, will be joining NATO in June 2004 at the Istanbul Summit. Added to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which joined the Alliance at the Washington Summit in 1999, ten Central and Eastern European countries will have joined NATO in the ten years since the Brussels Summit. The success of these Eastern and Central European countries in overcoming scepticism, pessimism, and the burden of their difficult histories - and in the process transforming themselves from post-communist societies into members of the community of Euro-Atlantic democracies - is proof that far-off dreams can come true if a nation′s leaders have clear political vision and will, supported by a systematic and resolute approach to implementing reforms.

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