LAST DECEMBER the United States was presented with two breakthroughs, each poised to advance a key U.S. foreign policy priority: the promotion of democracy and nuclear non-proliferation. In Ukraine the "Orange Revolution" thwarted a corrupt government's efforts to use a fraudulent vote count to install a hand-picked successor and brought to power as president Viktor Yushchenko, a leader committed not only to democratic reform at home but to integrating Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic community. Iran had agreed with the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) to suspend temporarily its uranium-enrichment activities during negotiations over its nuclear program.

One year later, however, the United States is worse off with respect to both Ukraine and Iran. Ukraine's government did not engage in the kind of reform effort the West had hoped to see, and the Orange coalition has fractured. Negotiations with Iran collapsed in late summer, with little prospect of a deal to place significant limits on its ability to develop and eventually deploy nuclear weapons.

It appeared at the beginning of 2005 that a key component of U.S. strategy in dealing both with Ukraine and Iran would be to use the incentive of membership in major international institutions as a way to bring about positive change. Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and with it normalized diplomatic relations with the Western powers (particularly an end to remaining economic sanctions), was clearly of interest to Iran, while Ukraine hoped that a clear signal on its prospective membership in both the EU and NATO would give the government the credibility it needed to pursue difficult reforms at home. Given the significant financial resources that the United States has committed elsewhere to bring about change in other states' behavior, it made sense to use international organizations to help induce change in these two countries.

Ukraine and Iran are, of course, different from each another in many respects. Ukraine has had its democratic revolution and the possibilities are real for sustained reform of the political establishment, including greater pluralism and less corruption, as well as liberalization of the economy. Iran remains an oppressive theocracy with a highly uncertain future. But a point of commonality is that, at the end of 2004, leaders in both states indicated that integration of their countries into the Euro-Atlantic community and the global economy, respectively, was a top priority.

In the case of Iran, we simply don't know how strong was the desire for integration--but it would have been a useful test of Iran's strategic calculus to probe precisely that point. It is difficult enough to negotiate with an Iran that is a major state sponsor of terrorism and under its previous government sent mixed signals on how strong was its desire to pursue a nuclear weapons program. After its 2005 elections the new hard-line government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears less susceptible to Western carrots. But the prospect of closer integration into the global economy was never adequately deployed as a negotiating point.

In the case of Ukraine, that desire for integration with the West was very strong, and in the first months of the Yushchenko Administration it seemed strong enough to encourage the government to undertake sweeping reforms. Unfortunately, because of its constitutional and budget crises, the EU's willingness to consider Ukraine as a possible member is an even more distant prospect than it was a year ago. In turn, this has put heightened pressure on NATO to develop its own accelerated timetable for membership. But NATO has put its enlargement policy largely on hold while the alliance tries to sort out what it might be able to accomplish in the broader Middle East. In both cases, there is now a real sense that the United States and its Western partners have few positive incentives to offer either Iran or Ukraine that can lead to desirable outcomes.

There is a broader issue of foreign policy strategy at stake here. While the United States has dramatically enhanced its deployment of sticks in the post-9/11 world, it has been less imaginative and successful in its use of carrots. Even an extraordinarily powerful country needs both as tools of foreign policy if it is going to get more of what it wants from the vast variety of states that it hopes to influence in different ways. Enhancing the capability and credibility of military force is important to U.S. influence abroad. But so is America's ability to offer to other states things that they say they want and need as an inducement for them to undertake a course of action that benefits U.S. strategic interests.

It is important to be clear that carrots are not some fuzzy manifestation of "soft power." They are not designed to make people like or admire America, feel good about the United States, or want for some other vague reasons to do what we wish. Carrots are concrete, material incentives that offer the promise of benefits to states that change their behavior in directions we desire. To promise an upside benefit to an adversary may require different diplomatic moves than threatening a downside risk, but the diplomacy is just as real and can in many instances be just as effective. Surely the combination of carrots and sticks is a more potent source of influence than either alone. But we've let our stock of carrots deteriorate while we've been overly focused on sharpening our sticks.

Certainly, there are times when carrots aren't appropriate--the United States is unlikely to gain influence over North Korea by offering membership in the WTO. But most U.S. foreign policy challenges--indeed, the lion's share--can be addressed by a deft and skillful changing of the mix of incentives and constraints for countries like Ukraine, Indonesia, Brazil or Venezuela so as to nudge and cajole such midlevel regimes to agree to U.S. objectives. In the long run, preventing more problems from migrating into the category where there are "no good options" (other than the prospect of military confrontation) is as important as dealing with those countries that already are on that list.

PROSPECTIVE membership in core international organizations is one of the most interesting carrots that the United States has available to encourage states to carry out military and economic reform, respect human rights and democratize. It is useful precisely because it can be relatively cheap for us to offer and at the same time quite valuable for the party on the other side of the table.

The power of prospective membership in leading international organizations to effect positive change was seen most clearly in the last decade in central and eastern Europe. Because both NATO and the EU held open the possibility of eventual membership, there were concrete incentives for political and business elites to press for change. Indeed, when leaders in central and eastern Europe were moving too slowly on certain reforms, the EU and NATO were there to hold their feet to the fire. It is important to recall that all of these countries had parliamentary and popular opposition to developing a market economy and pursuing military reform; they also had pockets of corruption and retrograde elements in the security apparatus. But the need to fulfill the institutional criteria--the acquis communautaire of the EU and NATO's Membership Action Plan (MAP), as well as the more general commitments to democracy, human rights and a market economy demanded by each organization--took a good deal of the political heat off the elected representatives who proposed reforms because in the end the vast majority of the populations were desperate to join the West.

At the same time, governments in the region that failed to comply with EU and NATO standards faced isolation. Consider the case of Slovakia. In the mid-1990s Slovak leader Vladimir Meciar did not respond to the institutional incentives dangled by the West, and Slovakia was not invited to join NATO in 1997 with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Meciar, who led Slovakia for all but six months from January 1993 to September 1998, was a quasi-authoritarian ruler who engaged in strong-arm tactics against political opponents as well as in nationalist diatribes against ethnic minorities, causing Freedom House in 1997 to place Slovakia behind Russia and on par with Moldova in its democracy rankings. It was only after Meciar's electoral demise in 1998 that the country moved swiftly to recover lost time.

In 2002 it appeared that Meciar was making a comeback in advance of the fall elections. Concerned about Meciar's prospects, EU Commissioner for Enlargement GŸnther Verheugen, NATO Secretary General George Robertson, and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns were among those who warned the Slovak people of the consequences of returning Meciar to power. At a news conference in Bratislava in February 2002, Burns stated, "The former government, we believe, did not demonstrate a commitment to democracy and the rule of law. The United States was therefore unable to support Slovakia's candidacy to NATO in 1997 for that reason." He added that "there is no evidence that the leadership of the party has changed, and that remains a fundamental concern of our government." U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia Ronald Weiser was even more blunt, saying, "if the situation repeats itself there will not be a NATO invitation for Slovakia." Meciar did not return to power, and as a result, Slovakia was able to join both NATO and the EU in 2004.

The economic incentives provided by the EU and the security provided by NATO were the big carrots that made the West's foreign policy in Europe so successful in the 1990s. Without NATO, the presence of lingering security dilemmas would have made the EU much more hesitant. What countries really wanted was the perceived economic benefits of the EU, but they could not have achieved them if they had to worry about securing their survival alone.

That is why events of the past year signal a more fundamental foreign policy deficit inherent in the Bush Administration's skeptical attitude toward international institutions. Carrots are measured and evaluated in the eye of the beholder. If the presumed targets of our influence value membership in international organizations, we should be in a position to enhance (or reduce) the benefits of those memberships. Enhancing the role played by these organizations in international life makes membership a more attractive thing to offer.

But U.S. policy in recent years has systematically had the effect of reducing the importance of international institutions and thus the attractions of membership. For example, rather than emphasize NATO's role in the provision of international security, as the Clinton Administration did in Kosovo, the Bush team has sought less cumbersome "coalitions of the willing" to fight the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq--believing that the lesson from the Kosovo War was that working through NATO was too time-consuming given the need for unanimity. And rather than make a concerted, continual effort to push forward with the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, the administration has pursued the much smaller Central American Free Trade Agreement and a set of bilateral deals with different states.

Of course, bilateral trade deals and coalitions of the willing certainly have real short-term advantages. But the costs of letting international institutions atrophy or of actively trimming their authority are measured not just in vague notions about legitimacy and long-term sustainability of policy. There are costs as well in hard-headed, short-term calculations of what the United States can offer on the upside to shape other states' behavior. If the United States undermines the most significant multilateral clubs at a time when important prospective members show an interest in joining, it will have severely damaged its ability to deploy cooperative strategies and promises that enhance the coercive strategies and threats with countries where we are trying to effect change.

IT IS ENTIRELY possible that Iran under the new presidency, in its ability to be influenced to change its behavior by carrots, is becoming more like North Korea than it is like Ukraine. Unlike the window of opportunity that presented itself a year ago, it may be that nothing the United States and the EU could offer as positive inducements would in fact thwart the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, at least at this time. In the spring of 2005 the United States dropped its longstanding objection to the WTO establishing a working party on Iran's accession in exchange for Iran's suspension of nuclear activities. Although WTO chief Pascal Lamy has signaled that the talks will go forward, Iran's bid to join should be linked to its willingness to suspend its uranium-enrichment programs; after all, carrots should be rewards to abiding by international norms.

But what of Ukraine? Here, the problem lies with the fact that the two international organizations that the Yushchenko government seeks to join don't seem to have a real game plan for moving Ukraine's prospects forward. After the "Big Bang" of 2004 (which admitted seven new countries into the alliance), enlargement is no longer central to NATO's activity. The alliance is understandably focused on the critical near-term issues of the success of the International Security Assistance Force operating in Afghanistan and the training of Iraqi security forces, as well as the longer-term need to develop expeditionary and deployment capabilities to deal with out-of-area crises that may arise in the future. As a result, even though President Yushchenko made it clear at the NATO summit in Brussels in February that Ukraine was ready to proceed with a formal MAP that, once fulfilled, would lead to membership, NATO was hesitant to move forward on a MAP. In April NATO created instead an "Intensified Dialogue" with Ukraine.

And for the European Union, even prior to 2004 there were doubts about expanding to encompass Ukraine, expressed most colorfully by former European Commission President Romano Prodi, who once said that Ukraine "has as much reason to be in the EU as New Zealand." While the negative reaction to EU enlargement among the populations of western Europe--highlighted by the French and Dutch votes against the European constitution in the summer of 2005--has centered on Turkey, Ukraine's prospect for membership in the EU will be one of the casualties of those votes. The EU website has an enlargement map that provides color codes for acceding countries, candidate countries and potential candidate countries--and Ukraine remains part of the gray blob to the east. One finds Ukraine on a different EU map, that of the European Neighborhood Policy, whose goal is to offer a "privileged relationship" with Europe's neighbors to the east and the south, rather than membership. Without concerted effort by the West to help Ukraine advance political and economic reform, it will not be able to make the leap from one map to the other.

Indeed, in contrast to the concerted effort by NATO and the EU to reach out to the central and east Europeans in the 1990s to help them succeed, the attitude expressed today is that achieving membership in the Euro-Atlantic community is largely on Ukraine's shoulders. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked in Brussels in February 2005 about Ukrainian membership in NATO, she said, "Things that were unimaginable 15 years ago are now imaginable, but I think that we need to do practical things here." When President Bush was in Brussels later that month he added, "NATO is a performance-based organization, and the door is open. But it's up to President Yushchenko and his government and the people of Ukraine to adopt the institutions of a democratic state." Similarly, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Kiev in June said of Yushchenko's "bold" strategy to join NATO: "NATO cannot drive this process. The responsibility--and the substantial burdens involved--rest squarely on the shoulders of the Ukrainian leadership."

Countries do have to carry out reform before being invited to join, since once membership is achieved, a significant form of immediate and direct leverage is lost. But if Ukraine is to have any chance of success, the Western institutions need to be more active in helping Ukraine pursue its membership goals, so that Yushchenko has something tangible to show his population and his military, in exchange for carrying out needed reform. After all, even when NATO puts countries on the fast track for membership, it takes years before they actually fulfill the criteria necessary to become members, and it takes significantly longer to join the European Union.

The alliance's point man for the relationship with Ukraine, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy Martin Erdmann, has said, "At some point, once Allies have had the chance to review Ukraine's progress in the framework of the Intensified Dialogue, they might decide to invite the country to join the [MAP] process." Unfortunately, however, Ukraine has lost the precious momentum for reform it had coming out of last winter's presidential election. Economist Anders Âslund has traced the many missteps taken by the government of Viktor Yushchenko and his first prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, during the first half of 2005 as the government decided to look toward the parliamentary elections of March 2006 rather than undertake critical reform. The result has been slower economic growth and reduced foreign investment. Âslund argues that a range of "largely populist objectives took so much of the government's time and effort that liberal policies such as accession to the WTO, integration with the European Union, and deregulation were put on the back burner."

Even Ukraine's progress in carrying out the measures necessary to join the WTO by the end of 2005, a much more modest goal of the Orange Revolution, has been more difficult than many had hoped. The Yushchenko government was only able to get part of the legislative package necessary for WTO membership through Parliament in early July before the summer recess. The broad coalition that helped bring Yushchenko to power fractured, and on this issue, the socialists did not support the government's legislative efforts. The government still hopes that it will have done enough to be considered for membership at the WTO meetings in Hong Kong in December.

The Ukrainian government's problems culminated in September with Yushchenko's dismissal of the government amidst charges of continued corruption and an open split between the president and prime minister in advance of the parliamentary elections. In a hopeful sign, new Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov has stated that the sales of government-owned assets, reduction of the budget deficit and the rate of inflation, and the passage of the legislation needed for WTO accession are among his top priorities.

Unless Ukraine gets a clearer signal from NATO or the EU regarding its membership prospects, why should the Ukrainian government choose difficult reform over populist measures in advance of the next elections or even the ones after that?

IT MAY be too late to believe that carrots are still useful in dealing with Iran. The United States has been working to convince the IAEA board to report Iran to the UN Security Council, where the United States will hope that it can somehow get the votes it needs to impose sanctions. In contrast, there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful about Ukraine, which is why NATO's role in helping anchor Ukraine in the West is so important.

But to envision a further round of NATO enlargement to include countries like Ukraine, the Bush Administration must be convinced of the alliance's future relevance to want to invest in its rejuvenation. To date the signs are not encouraging. Already, the alliance is limited both by the lack of deployable European units for Afghanistan and by the unpopularity of the Iraq War in Europe. And given that both President Bush and Secretary of State Rice have made clear that promoting democracy in the Middle East is a central goal (at least rhetorically) of this administration's second term, NATO is increasingly only relevant to them to the extent that NATO members are willing to use the institution as part of this larger effort. But the European allies have not been enthusiastic about American foreign policy in the region, largely of course because of opposition to the war in Iraq, and their consent to using NATO beyond the mission in Afghanistan is unlikely. Europeans have not had the will to develop the capabilities they need to deploy more troops for these kinds of missions, but they have even less incentive today given American downplaying of the institution. But as the Europeans are even less ambitious regarding NATO's mission, the Bush Administration will be even less interested in this particular institution. And a NATO that increasingly becomes a symbolic body, instead of an action-oriented international organization that can protect and enhance its members' security, cannot serve as the basis for a meaningful process of enlargement. Countries like Ukraine will have less interest in engaging in a painful reform process to join an "honorary club" of European democracies--after all, it already belongs to the OSCE and the Council of Europe.

The opportunities for NATO to be more pro-active are slipping away, and further enlargement to the east will be the casualty. It was the United States that drove NATO's previous enlargements, and those efforts paved the way for the European Union to move forward. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) warned in 1993 that NATO had to "go out of area or out of business", a mantra that justified not only the efforts to stabilize the Balkans but the enlargement process itself. If the United States does not push enlargement to include countries like Ukraine, the process will come to an end. And given that the EU is now looking inward rather than further east or south, the carrots that were available to the Poles, Czechs and others--so instrumental in their recent achievements--appear to have been lost. In 2005 the Ukrainian government suffered a serious fissure amidst charges of continued corruption at the highest levels. If the West does not work actively with the Yushchenko government to get reform back on track, Ukraine may fall back into the pattern of failed reform that gripped the country in the 1990s. If the West cannot move forward with the integration of Ukraine, there will be little hope for the rest of the former Soviet Union.

THE BUSH team has tended to think about international organizations in terms of constraints on U.S. power rather than as a package of incentives to other states. This misses the point that, although some ˆ la carte bargaining is always possible between states, much like a prix fixe menu, the most important choices are structured by those who control the menu itself. At the end of the Cold War, the United States found itself in the extraordinary position of having almost historically unprecedented control over the menus that mattered most to many other states. The ability to structure the agenda in this way was a significant asset in the 1990s.

In this decade, the United States has let that asset lapse. This leaves us with fewer carrots to offer states that fall into the category of midlevel influence problems--not the North Korea type but rather the Brazil, Indonesia and Ukraine type. And the reality of the global situation is that in the near future the United States will need to offer more positive incentives and upside benefits to partners with whom it wishes cooperation on a whole host of issues, from economic adjustment and the management of our dual deficits to vital cooperation on security issues and particularly the management of terrorist infrastructures that locate elsewhere but threaten principally U.S. interests. This adds up to an expensive agenda if we have to pay for the carrots all by ourselves. Prudence dictates that a sound, realistic U.S. foreign policy not erode those institutions that could help to ease the burdens.

James M. Goldgeier is Henry A. Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Steven Weber is professor of political science and director of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.