Fred Kaplan makes an odd claim about Bush and NATO expansion:

This is one reason President Bill Clinton didn’t include Ukraine in his NATO “enlargement” campaign, which did bring Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltics into the fold, nor did President George W. Bush amend the list after mulling the pros and cons [bold mine-DL].

Kaplan is right that the U.S. has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine, and obviously I agree with him on the futility of arming Ukraine, but this bit about Bush not wanting to expand NATO to include Ukraine is incorrect. Not only did Bush want this, but he actively pushed for it at the last NATO summit of his presidency at Bucharest. It was there that NATO told Ukraine and Georgia that they would eventually become members of the alliance. The summit declaration stated, “We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” It was that promise, among other things, that contributed to the dramatic increase in tensions between Russia and Georgia and the war between them later that year. Had Bush had his way, Ukraine and Georgia would have also both received Membership Action Plans at Bucharest. The New York Times reported at the time:

President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies.

Mr. Bush’s position — that Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, that prepares nations for NATO membership — directly contradicted German and French government positions stated earlier this week.

Had it not been for the opposition of sane European leaders at the time, Ukraine and Georgia would have been put on track for NATO membership with dangerous consequences for all concerned. In other words, Bush didn’t change his mind after “mulling the pros and cons,” but was prevented from pressing ahead with a reckless policy only because of resistance from our allies in Europe. Bush very much wanted to “amend the list,” but was blocked from doing so. The point here is that it should not be forgotten that just a few years ago the U.S. was eagerly pushing to expand NATO into these countries. This was a consensus view in Washington endorsed by leading members of both parties, including the current president and vice president, and judged in retrospect it was an even more ludicrous and dangerous idea than it seemed at the time.