page_title: Enlargement of NATO
section_title: Vilnius Group
hierarchical_section_title: Enlargement of NATO / Past enlargements / Central and Eastern Europe / Vilnius Group
caption_attribution_description: English: Flags of Nato, Bulgaria, European Union in front of the Military club, Plovdiv, Bulgaria Français&#160;: Drapeaux de l'Otan, de la Bulgarie, de l'Union européenne devant le Club militaire de Plovdiv, Bulgarie.
context_page_description: Enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the process of including new member states in NATO. NATO is a military alliance of twenty-eight European and two North American countries that constitutes a system of collective defense. The process of joining the alliance is governed by Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which allows only for the invitation of "other European States", and by subsequent agreements. Countries wishing to join have to meet certain requirements and complete a multi-step process involving political dialogue and military integration. The accession process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body.
  After its formation in 1949 with twelve founding members, NATO grew by including Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955, and then later Spain in 1982. After the Cold War ended, and Germany reunited in 1990, there was a debate in NATO about continued expansion eastward. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO, amid much debate within the organization and Russian opposition.
context_section_description: Shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the George H.W. Bush administration (1989-1993) began to debate internally whether enlargement of NATO was feasible and desirable. By mid-1992, a consensus emerged within the administration that NATO enlargement was a wise realpolitik measure to strengthen American hegemony. In the absence of NATO enlargement, Bush administration officials worried that the European Union might fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe, and thus challenge American post-Cold War influence. There was an active debate within the Clinton administration (1993-2001) between a rapid offer of full membership to several select countries verses a slower, more limited membership to a wide range of states over a longer time span. Victory by the Republican Party, who advocated for aggressive expansion, in the 1994 U.S. congressional election helped sway U.S. policy in favor of wider full-membership enlargement.
  At the 1999 Washington summit, where Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic officially joined, NATO also issued new guidelines for membership with individualized "Membership Action Plans" for Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. In May 2000, these countries joined with Croatia to form the Vilnius Group in order to cooperate and lobby for common NATO membership, and by the 2002 Prague summit seven were invited for membership, which took place at the 2004 Istanbul summit.  Russia was particularly upset with the addition of the three Baltic states, the first countries that were part of the Soviet Union to join NATO.
caption: Flags of NATO, Bulgaria, European Union at the Military club of Plovdiv, Bulgaria
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