Over the past two decades, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has enlarged several times to include a number of new countries. The first two case studies that are analyzed within this paper include key countries that were added in the 1999 and 2004 rounds of NATO enlargement: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The third case study takes a closer look at two countries, Ukraine and Georgia, that sought to become members of NATO but were denied Membership Action Plans (MAPs) because of Russian discontent and military intervention. It is questionable if Russia will use military force to disrupt the territorial sovereignty of future prospective NATO candidate countries. This paper aims to identify the trend between countries seeking NATO membership and Russian intervention within these countries. Poland joined NATO in 1999, and much to Moscow’s dislike, NATO’s borders expanded farther into Eastern Europe. The Baltic States, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, joined NATO in 2004, pushing the NATO border right against Russia’s northwestern front. This gave western alliances the ability to host military operations through NATO on the Russian border. It is apparent that Moscow has done everything in its power to prevent more countries that share a border with Russia from joining NATO. Only three months after the Bucharest Summit in 2008, Russia invaded two territories in Georgia. After the pro-Russian president in Ukraine was ousted in 2014, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. In order to be offered a MAP, the candidate country must have complete sovereignty over its territory. By invading key points within both Georgia and Ukraine, Russia was delaying their ability to become members of the security alliance. It is apparent that there is a connection between increased NATO collaboration with countries that border Russia, and military action taken upon those countries by Russia.

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Why, despite the territorial fragmentation and unresolved conflicts in both countries, does NATO maintain a public commitment to a 2008 decision promising the future membership of Ukraine and Georgia? It can be argued that the "Bucharest decision" has prompted the very attack that NATO membership was meant to prevent. Russia has invaded both states to, among other things, prevent their likely incorporation in NATO. What causes publicly articulated military alliance policy aspirations to endure when they induce such geopolitical conflict, and geopolitical transformation, that it undermines their purpose? This dissertation takes these puzzles as its object of inquiry. The focus of the study is Ukraine and Georgia's partial integration into NATO from 2007 to 2020. This research uses the concepts of robust action and rhetorical action to examine the two countries' growing partnerships with the alliance during this period. It defines robust action as a series of ambiguous moves to achieve tactical goals while maintaining long term flexibility. Rhetorical action is defined as the strategic use of arguments to serve an agent's interests. By using a narrative analysis method, the study draws from a body of NATO official texts and speeches and a set of original interviews to illustrate the public and private narratives used by political and military officials to help them make sense of NATO's engagement with Ukraine and Georgia. Existing literature on NATO expansion has not addressed how the alliance has adapted the process of integrating aspirant countries short of membership. Moreover, the literature on robust action has not focused on how international security organizations like NATO can use ambiguous actions to tackle complex challenges and maintain flexibility. The study argues that NATO's engagement with Ukraine and Georgia since Bucharest constitutes a robust action strategy. Through a combination of rhetorical and material support, NATO has simultaneously been able to maintain the appearance of a commitment to the two countries, show Western resolve and solidarity in opposing Russia and sustaining the United States' preferred vision of Europe's security order, all while denying Ukraine and Georgia "full membership" in the alliance. Ukraine, Georgia, and their allies in NATO have used rhetorical action, arguments based on the self-defined liberal values and norms of the Euro-Atlantic community that NATO represents on the one hand, and the historical precedent of an open door policy toward membership, on the other, to rhetorically entrap NATO into staying committed. The study shows how multilateral commitments are more layered than the traditional membership/no membership choice and how NATO has been able to successfully maintain such a commitment through both rhetoric and action while avoiding a direct war with Russia. It concludes however that NATO's commitment is untenable for a military alliance based on defense and deterrence. This has implications for the future of NATO expansion and the overall trajectory of the alliance. / Doctor of Philosophy / The possibility of further expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia has been among the alliance's greatest challenges since the 2008 Bucharest summit decision, which promised the future membership of the two countries. Many accounts tend to focus on the original motivation behind the decision rather than NATO's practice of maintaining a commitment to such a decision in the light of the unresolved conflicts and territorial fragmentation of both states. This study, by contrast, examines the rhetoric and action in the making of the two countries' deepening partnerships with NATO since Bucharest. This research examines how through a set of ambiguous rhetoric and action NATO has been able to maintain the appearance of a commitment to Ukraine and Georgia, project Western resolve against Russian opposition, and sustain the United States' preferred vision of the European security order, all while denying the two countries membership in the alliance. Moreover, the advocates for Ukraine and Georgia use arguments based on NATO's identity, values, and the precedent of prior expansions to convince the alliance into staying committed to their eventual membership. The study shows how NATO has devised a formula for integrating aspirant members, short of "full membership." It is useful because it shows how, in practice, multilateral commitments are more layered than they are traditionally understood. While NATO has been able to successfully maintain this commitment through both rhetoric and action, such a commitment clashes with important qualities of adaptability and flexibility to changing strategic realities, crucial to the endurance of a military alliance over the long term.

By placing host nation support at the center of the study's stakeholder analysis, fifteen stakeholders are identified based on NATO's principles for host nation support. The stakeholders are categorized into four categories, and their mutual interest and resource relationships are analyzed. The study concludes that the main actor for Swedish host nation support, the Swedish Armed Forces, needs to carefully manage core stakeholders, collaborate with primary stakeholders, keep secondary stakeholders integrated, and keep other stakeholders informed. The study's conclusions are that Swedish host nation support benefits from external requirements, that host nation support is the price Sweden has to pay for NATO membership, and that procurement and infrastructure investments need to be exempted from current legislation. The study claims that stakeholder theory analysis is useful in contexts other than the business world and that the process model used is transferable to other stakeholder analyses in other contexts.

In this essay Sweden’s relationship with NATO is explored in a theory consuming case study. The aim is to explain why Sweden is not a member of NATO but still wants to have a close cooperation and has entered a memorandum of understanding on Host Nation Support with NATO. The reason for not entering NATO is that Sweden wants to be military non- aligned. The memorandum of understanding on Host Nation Support is motivated by that Sweden wants to be interoperable with NATO in order to be able to give and receive military support. Other reasons are that it is a way for the Swedish military to develop, it increases efficiency and it makes Sweden more competitive by decreasing administrative costs. The reasons for Sweden’s decisions are analyzed and explained with two theories: realism and liberalism. Realism can explain well why Sweden does not want to enter a membership and liberalism can explain well why Sweden has entered the memorandum of understanding on Host Nation Support.

In 2008 Russia surprised the West by going to war with Georgia. While several analyses have pointed to separate actions by NATO and the West as having influenced the 2008 war, this paper endeavors to show that the combined actions of the West and NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union created a security dilemma for Russia. Because the West refused to properly acknowledge and address Russia’s dilemma, the West inadvertently created the conditions which led to the culmination of Russia’s security dilemma in the form of an invasion of Georgia. Russia’s war with Georgia was less an attempt to protect Russian citizens and prevent atrocities as it was a rebuttal of Western actions. This thesis examines the security dilemma and cooperation theories as presented by Dr. Robert Jervis, and looks specifically at Western-Russian relations relating to three spheres: NATO expansion and Western marginalization of Russia, Western unilateral and extra-U.N. military aggression, and Western anti-ballistic missile defense initiatives and programs. Western actions relating to these three spheres created the conditions for the war, and specifics within the Caucasus region and relating to separatist conflicts drove Russia to deem a war with Georgia a politically safe rebuttal to the West. This paper also examines continued Western refusal to acknowledge Russia’s dilemma and developing conditions, as they relate to the three spheres of NATO expansion, unilateral military action and missile defenses, which could potentially lead to further conflict between Russia and the West. / text

Zugl.: Konstanz, University, Diss., 2006.

Univ., Diss.-2002--Saarbrücken, 2001. / Literaturverz. S. 253 - 261.