NATO Enlargement Eastwards

The decision to open the doors of NATO and the EU to central and eastern Europe in the 1990s was an example of successful crisis prevention. The greatest foreign-policy challenge and preoccupation for NATO at the moment is how to achieve a more productive relationship with Russia, while developing justified and fair policies toward new aspirants - Ukraine and Georgia, that were already promised a membership card one day . This work has one main purpose: to evaluate the pros and cons of NATO enlargement and weigh in on whether it will have positive and/or negative consequences for all involved parties: the Alliance, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia, as well as European security in general. Presented work doesn t intend to predict any future developments in NATO s actions. What it aims, is to give a realistic picture of the whole enlargement process in order to close the existing gap in scholarly works, define all the undefined issues and finally understand why NATO enlargement is so crucially important both for the Alliance and Ukraine and Georgia, and more specifically for preventing conflicts and preserving stability in East European region.