John Vinocur is upset that Ukraine hasn’t been on track to become a member of NATO:

Indeed, Chancellor Merkel created a precedent in 2008 when she prevailed over the Bush administration at a summit and stopped NATO from giving Ukraine the status of a candidate member. Such a link could have meant a NATO obligation to come directly to Ukraine’s defense if Mr. Putin had once again cut off Ukraine’s energy supply to punish its Western ambitions.

More likely, pushing more aggressively to bring Ukraine into NATO would have precipitated an international crisis far more dangerous and explosive than the political dispute currently taking place. In such a crisis, the U.S. and its allies would then have been forced to back up the foolish commitment to Ukraine or undermine the entire alliance, and that could have created conditions for a serious deterioration in relations and possibly even armed conflict. As it was, NATO still made a serious mistake in promising Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day become members, but as Vinocur reminds us the mistake could have been so much worse if the Bush administration had had its way.

The goal of trying to expand NATO deeper into the former Soviet Union was a foolish one six years ago, which should be quite obvious by now. It is simply baffling that anyone should now look back on that episode and regret that NATO didn’t offer Ukraine even more. Vinocur’s lament that Ukraine was not dragged into the alliance–against the wishes of most of its people–tells us all that we need to know about his judgment on these matters. As recently as 2009, Gallup found that 40% of Ukrainians viewed NATO as a threat to their country, so it is hardly surprising that there was never much popular support for joining the alliance.