Thin thread:

NATO plans to add three new members at its summit meeting this week, proving that it is still a club that European states want to join. The chance of membership has proved to be a good carrot for encouraging democracy in the 11 nations that have joined since the end of the Cold War. We hope it would do the same for the newest aspirants: Albania, Croatia and Macedonia. Despite its benefits, expansion will not cure what ails the NATO. The greatest military alliance in history has begun the 21st century without a consensus about the threats it faces and how to meet them.

There is still a huge gap in American and allied military capabilities and spending. And alliance leaders have yet to have a serious and sustained discussion on how they would jointly address such major challenges as nonproliferation, energy security or a rising China. Nor has the alliance figured out how to deal with Russia, whose opposition to Ukraine and Georgia being tapped as possible future members could create even more division and acrimony at the summit meeting. Moscow must not have a veto over who joins NATO.

But Bush was bull-headed in insisting decisions on Ukraine and Georgia be made this year. NATO has many more urgent problems to deal with, starting with how to salvage the bloody war in Afghanistan. — International Herald Tribune