Attachment

Model Protocol on NATO Enlargement

This protocol provides implementing language for the steps discussed above; enlarging on constructive beginnings in the NATO Study, it arrives at actual solutions to the problems posed therein. Its adoption would give the alliance the tools it needs for admitting new members without delay, without drawing any rigid dividing lines. It does this – building on the NATO Study’s idea of group accessions and commitments not to veto in sequential admissions – by first admitting in principle all the potential members, and then setting up a diplomatic process for completing the particular accessions without vetoes.

1. NATO, under Article X of the North Atlantic Treaty, is open to all European countries. It has historically used OSCE and OECD to define the bounds of Europe. In 1994 it accepted the goal of membership for all willing OSCE countries. The NATO Members hereby contract in principle for membership for all willing OSCE and OECD countries, subject to subsequent adoption by the North Atlantic Council of a Protocol of Accession for each new member, and establishes a Committee to Negotiate Protocols of Accession.

2. On matters within the purview of the Council and on which the North Atlantic Treaty does not create a right of veto – including disposition of NATO infrastructure, and authorization for a Combined Joint Task Force to be formed or to take an action in the name of NATO – the Council strives for consensus but can decide by 2/3 weighted vote. (The Council will set voting weights by population, with additional weight for small states.) If a member opts out of a particular NATO action, it pledges not to undermine that action. Each member state retains its sovereignty: it remains free to leave NATO, and NATO cannot legislate any positive action for it to which it does not consent.

3. Alliance standards for new members include: democracy or a democratic Atlanticist orientation, reaffirmation of OSCE commitments as part of the commitment to NATO, and acceptance of binding NATO arbitration in case of militarized conflict with other members. NATO hereby establishes a Committee on Standards. If this Committee, or the Council, finds that alliance standards have been met adequately for NATO purposes by a country, the Council may, by a 2/3 weighted vote, adopt and ratify a Protocol of full or associate membership for that country; or, if it is found that standards are being infringed by a member in a way that could damage NATO, the Council may expel or suspend the member, or make it an Associate Member, defining attendant rights and duties.

4. The Council finds that there are governments that are primarily freely elected in most OECD and OSCE countries, including the Visegrad and Baltic states, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia; that it is in the security interest of the Atlantic democracies for these countries to join NATO on the terms outlined in the present Protocol; that they would promote the principles of the alliance by joining NATO on said terms; and that they thereby meet the alliance standards and the Article X accession requirements, subject to negotiation of a National Protocol of Accession that concretizes and implements the present Protocol.