ABSTRACT
This chapter asserts that the consequences of enlargement for post-communist Europe are inseparable from how the policy has affected North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It offers a short chronological account and overviews enlargement's geographic scope. The chapter describes an analysis of the reasoning behind the policy and the attendant scholarly explanations. A more precise claim to NATO's democratic effect relates to the transformation of the armed forces in post-communist states. The institutional 'architecture' of European security in the 1990s and early 2000s seemed pre-disposed to NATO enlargement in that no other body had, after the Cold War, developed the combined functions of collective defence, conflict management, and coercive power. As S. Talbott argued, to rule the country out as a matter of principle would be both a 'gratuitous insult to Russia and would belie claim that NATO enlargement served the larger cause of inclusive integration.'
