A Bad Move: Further NATO ExpansionHow to effectively respond to the crisis in Ukraine has elicited a fierce debate in Washington. Given the stakes, a carefully crafted, longer-term strategy is called for beyond near-term crisis management. But some of the proposals offered entail severe risks and self-defeating consequences. This is especially true of recently renewed calls for a fresh round of NATO enlargement ahead of the alliance’s summit this September in the United Kingdom. These calls appear to be more of a perpetuation of NATO enlargement’s post–Cold War inertia than a seriously thought out strategy that considers the balance of potential costs and benefits. At a minimum, proponents of enlargement have not met the burden of demonstrating its supposed positive effects that, upon closer inspection, appear much more likely to undermine European security—potentially including the credibility of NATO itself.

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