Evaluating NATO Enlargement

James Goldgeier is Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011–17.  Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson is Associate Professor with the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Senior Fellow with the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), and Associate Editor of H-Diplo’s International Security Studies Forum (ISSF).

1. Evaluating NATO enlargement: scholarly debates, policy implications, and roads not taken.- Part I. Foreign Policy and Strategy Debates.- 2. Patterns of Continuity in NATO's Long History.- 3. NATO as a Political Alliance: Continuities and Legacies in the Enlargement Debates of the 1990s.- 4. NATO Enlargement and US Foreign Policy: Origins and Consequences.- 5. Myths and Realities of Putinism and NATO Expansion.- Part II. Great Power Relations.- 6. NATO Enlargement and US Grand Strategy: A Net Assessment.- 7. NATO Enlargement: Evaluating Its Consequences in Russia.- 8. The Tragedy of US-Russian Relations: NATO Centrality and the Revisionists' Spiral.- 9. China Views NATO: Beijing's Concerns About Transatlantic Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.- Part III. European Security.- 10. Thank Goodness For NATO Enlargement.- 11. Good For Democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO Expansion.- 12. Ukraine's Bid to Join NATO: Re-evaluating Enlargement in a New Strategic Context.- 13. Every Which Way But Loose: NATO Enlargement, European Strategic Autonomy, and Fragmentation.- Part IV. Organizational Politics and Debates.- 14. Assessing the Consequences of Enlargement for the NATO Military Alliance.- 15. From Peace to War: The Military Implications of NATO Enlargement.- 16. NATO Enlargement and The Failure of the Cooperative Security Mindset.

"This edited volume represents, as yet, the single most important English-language contribution to the question of post-Cold War NATO enlargement. Goldgeier and Shifrinson largely concede that their efforts remain incomplete, but they have begun answering questions that will only grow more important with time. This important edited volume will benefit policy-makers, allowing a deeper sense of history to inform their decision-making and serving as a reminder of the contingent forces that shape world politics." (Harold Mock, International Affairs, Vol. 100 (1), 2024)
"This interesting and important collections of essays on the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its consequences appearedat a historic moment ... . It is a development-and to some extent an adjustment-of the papers that were published as a special issue of International Politics in 2020 ... . the volume intelligently tries to bring some consensus to the discussion." (Harold James, H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews, November 3, 2023)