How to effectively respond to the crisis in Ukraine has elicited a fierce debate in Washington. Given the stakes, a carefully crafted, longer-term strategy is called for beyond near-term crisis management. But some of the proposals offered entail severe risks and self-defeating consequences. This is especially true of recently renewed calls for a fresh round of NATO enlargement ahead of the alliance’s summit this September in the United Kingdom. These calls appear to be more of a perpetuation of NATO enlargement’s post–Cold War inertia than a seriously thought out strategy that considers the balance of potential costs and benefits. At a minimum, proponents of enlargement have not met the burden of demonstrating its supposed positive effects that, upon closer inspection, appear much more likely to undermine European security—potentially including the credibility of NATO itself.

The Unmet Burden of NATO Enlargement

Recent legislation introduced by Republicans in the House calls to extend NATO membership to Montenegro, grant a Membership Action Plan to Georgia—a key step towards NATO membership—and calls for greater U.S. support for solving disputes between Macedonia and Greece that have been preventing Macedonian accession to the alliance. But paving the way for further NATO enlargement is hardly a partisan issue. In February, a letter signed by forty members of Congress from both parties was sent to Secretary Kerry that encouraged “continued efforts to make enlargement a key priority for the United States and the alliance” and encouraged similar steps as called for in the House bill in order to “increase stability and security in the region.”

The proposal is nothing new for Congress. In 2007, Congress passed the NATO Freedom Consolidation Act that supported enlargement efforts involving Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Ukraine and Georgia. The legislation also justified NATO enlargement on the basis of enhancing the “stability and security in Europe.”

The Obama Administration, too, has supported NATO enlargement, although it’s generally been less specific about the potential scope and timing of expansion.

But enlarging NATO entails substantial risks that have been all but glossed over by proponents. A fresh phase of expansion, especially one including Georgia, would undoubtedly be perceived by Russia as an escalating policy of strategic encirclement—or worse. Russian officials have consistently voiced this perception of American and European policy, most recently when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterized Western strategic behavior as “spreading…geopolitical influence to the East, which has become, in essence, ‘a new edition’ of the line for containing Russia.”

This perception would be especially acute in the case of Georgia. Georgia’s movement toward NATO, which became a top foreign policy objective for Tbilisi following the Rose Revolution in 2003, was one of a host of factors that precipitated the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Months before the war, the Bush Administration attempted to offer Georgia a Membership Action Plan (MAP) but was rebuffed at the Bucharest NATO Summit by France and Germany. But Georgian membership remained on the table as the alliance committed to extending membership to Tbilisi on an unspecified timeline. Highlighting Russian thinking on Georgia and NATO expansion, in 2011, then-President Medvedev attributed the fact that NATO had not expanded to Russia’s actions in Georgia.

The Steep Risks of Enlargement

Against this background, a strong Russian response to fresh round of NATO enlargement should be expected.

Most immediately, Moscow might formally withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The treaty prohibits the fielding of land-based, intermediate-range cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Moscow has threatened withdrawal from the treaty a number of times for various reasons, including in response to U.S. missile defense in Europe, and may already be in violation of the INF. Reports from early this year indicate possible Russian tests of a ground-launched cruise missile with a range in excess of 500 kilometers. While details are scarce, some Russian military analysts have suggested the culprit may be a version of the R-500 missile modified for an extended range of up to 700 kilometers. Should Russia withdraw from the INF, NATO could be faced with a dramatically more capable Russian precision-strike regime augmented by ground-launched assets that are cheap, effective and costly to defend against.

This would present Europe with a complex, costly problem similar to what the United States and its allies are facing in the Western Pacific. There, Chinese military modernization—a nation not party to the INF—is employing land-based cruise and ballistic missiles as a linchpin in its anti-access/area-denial system designed to hold at risk U.S. and allied forces in critical areas throughout the region.

While one could argue that Russia is violating the INF already, which seems to be the case, differences in degrees matter (in this case the difference between testing and deployment, including potentially large-scale deployment). Western policy makers should regard Russia’s withdrawing from the INF treaty as a severe security complication to be avoided, not made more likely.

Of course, the ultimate probability of Russia leaving the INF Treaty depends upon a variety of other factors. Chief among them presumably are the broader dynamics of U.S. and Russian military competition. But aspects of these dynamics lead to more concern. In particular, U.S. pursuit of nonballistic hypersonic weapons and renewed emphasis on long-range strike capabilities present threats to Russia it will likely find difficult to respond to in kind, especially given Russia’s comparatively limited funds and technical expertise. As such, Russia already has some incentive to consider INF withdrawal, as its apparent testing violations demonstrate, given the low costs associated with intermediate-range ballistic missiles which are themselves hypersonic weapons. As a result, the proposed NATO expansion could result in a powerful confluence of variables that should give policy makers pause in considering how they want to spend risk.

Similarly, NATO enlargement risks affecting Russian nuclear doctrine in ways that would deeply undermine regional security. There is already troubling precedent on this score. Following NATO interventions in the Balkans during the 1990s, Russia assessed NATO outclassed its conventional forces to a significant extent. Moscow’s response was to adopt a nuclear doctrine that called for employing nuclear weapons early in a confrontation against a conventionally superior force in order to terminate the conflict on Russian terms. The doctrine explicitly cited “the expansion of military blocs and alliances to the detriment of the Russian Federation's military security” as among its justification. Further lowering of the Russia’s doctrinal threshold for nuclear first-use should be discouraged, not incentivized, and if possible, walked back.

If one was interested in being exhaustive, a laundry list of other potential second-order effects of undue NATO enlargement appears. Would Russia undermine the nuclear negotiations with Iran or other follow-up steps with Tehran that may ultimately be required? Would Russia escalate its involvement in Syria? Would there be counterproductive effects in Moscow and Beijing’s strategic relationship? What about presently unforeseen future events that could require Moscow’s cooperation to address?

Dubious Payoffs

None of this is to suggest that American and European leaders should not be willing to take risks in confronting Russia. Risks—including sizable ones—should absolutely be on the table. The issue, however, is the balance between risks and payoffs.Perhaps such an extensive risk-list as above would be worth tolerating for actions that had higher payoffs. But in the case of NATO enlargement it’s difficult to identify such justifying benefits.

The supposed primary benefit of NATO enlargement would be to constrain Russian assertiveness. But this point of view runs into a number of problems.

First, there have been three rounds of NATO enlargement since the end of the Cold War, adding twelve new states to the alliance. Yet, problematic Russian behavior has nonetheless proceeded alongside this 40 percent increase in member states.

Second, problems also arise on the more specific matter of Russian behavior towards potential new NATO members. Even if one assumes that Russia would not attack a fresh member of NATO, enlarging the alliance—especially to Georgia—would dramatically increase the likelihood of severe crises between Moscow and the West. Given the facts on the ground in Georgia, a strong casus belli for Moscow or Tbilisi would be only a half-step removed from present circumstances. Russia maintains 7,000 soldiers in Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia—neither of which are recognized by Georgia or most of the international community. Russia has built up infrastructure as well. In the case of Abkhazia, for example Moscow has invested nearly half a billion dollars in upgrading the port of Ochamchira, from which Russian Coast Guard vessels operate, and the Bombora airfield, which has seen Russian MiG-29 and Su-27 deployments. In other words, if Georgia were to join the alliance, NATO’s Article 5 would be extended to disputed political space in which the Russian armed forces already operate under post-conflict conditions. Moscow’s accusations that Georgia harbors anti-Russian terrorists provide additional pathways for crises and escalation as well.

Third, Georgian membership might very well undermine the credibility of NATO itself. Collective security operates on the basis of a conditional threat: if a member state is attacked, member states will respond with military action. For any threat to succeed in its intended purpose—in this case, deterring hypothetical Russian military action—the threat must be credible. Therein lies the rub: would Putin seriously believe the United States and NATO would risk war with a major nuclear power over Georgia? Facing strategic encirclement, Putin—who has proved himself to be risk-tolerant—might decide it’s worth paying to find out, or at least test the waters and probe for cracks in the alliance to exploit. After all, it is prima facie difficult to believe the United States and major European powers would be willing to defend Georgia as strenuously as they would more-established member states where significant material interests obtain beyond the credibility of NATO.