NATO is engaged in a summit with a mix of topics up for discussion, from expansion of the alliance to ballistic missile defense to doctrinal changes. Though the April 2-4 summit in Bucharest, Romania, is still under way, enough decisions have been made to establish the summit’s agenda regarding expansion. NATO issued formal membership invitations to both Albania and Croatia. All that remains now between the two Balkan nations and NATO membership is ratification by their respective parliaments, something that has never proven particularly thorny. Formal Albanian and Croatian membership is likely by 2009 or 2010. Macedonia, however, received a conditional invitation contingent upon resolving its dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s name. Greece feels that using the name "Macedonia" implies a territorial claim to the Greek region with the same name, so Athens has used its veto to block Macedonian accession until an agreement over the naming issue is reached. And that is the end of the expansion process, at least for now. Despite intense lobbying by the United States, Canada and most of Central Europe, Western European members refused to grant a membership action plan (MAP), the first step toward membership, to the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Unsurprisingly, Russia welcomed that development, calling it a diplomatic victory. But this will only prove a temporary reprieve for Moscow. The states opposing the MAP, led by Germany and France, did not oppose Georgian and Ukrainian membership per se. Instead, they simply argued that the two states had yet to meet the technical criteria to warrant an MAP. The primary concern of Western European states is not alliance expansion, but alliance coherence. They are guided in their logic in no small way by whether the proposed NATO member is also a serious candidate for EU membership. For example, France and Germany were convinced that the Baltic states and the Balkan countries were reasonable candidates, but that Ukraine and Georgia are too far afield. For now, anyway. Paris and Berlin both explicitly noted that membership for Ukraine and Georgia was simply a matter of time. Support for stronger NATO engagement for both states is strong and growing, just not strong enough to justify a fast-track for membership at this time. In fact, NATO already has penciled in a discussion of the MAP issue for December talks. As to the states that did make the membership cut this round, bringing in two — and probably three — new members in the Balkans will nail down the last major security crisis of the Yugoslav wars, the issue that consumed much NATO attention in the 1990s. Croatia and Macedonia border Serbia, and Albania did until Kosovo declared independence in February. This means that with the exception of NATO-run Bosnia and NATO-fast-tracked Montenegro, landlocked Serbia is about to be completely surrounded by NATO members. Politics aside, that development will remove any hope Belgrade has of charting a successful course independent of the West. Many Serbs are furious (to put it mildly) that NATO and the European Union have enabled their rebellious province of Kosovo to break away under Western sponsorship. The nationalist backlash has made many think that they should seek a partnership with Russia to counter the West. But being hedged in on all sides not only by NATO allies, but by NATO itself, means that choosing that path would decimate Serbia in the long run — and perhaps even in the short run.