Mixed bag at the big NATO Summit this week:

NATO leaders agreed Thursday to endorse a United States missile defense system based in Europe and to provide more troops for Afghanistan, but they refused to back President Bush’s proposal to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO membership.

Washington’s failure to win over Germany, France, Italy, Spain and other crucial European countries to its view on Ukraine and Georgia was considered by some countries of Central and Eastern Europe to have sent a message of alliance weakness to Moscow, a day before the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, makes his first visit to a NATO summit meeting.

Well I don't think that anyone expected it to be all sunshine and skittles over there--not with all the bad blood over Afghanistan--so that's not a bad showing by the president. I'm not a huge fan of bringing new nations on board, unless they've got troops in the queue ready to earn that NATO merit badge in Afghanistan. We've got enough problems integrating the current eastern European nations' highly centralized Armed Forces into the weird multi-faceted chain of commands that make up NATO, ISAF, KFOR, and so on, so why shoulder even more baggage?

The obvious counterpoint, that with critical manning shortages in places like the Helmand Province, it wouldn't hurt to invite a few more willing souls to the Afghanistan party.

Exit question: had President Bush's missile defense plan failed and new national applicants been green lighted, would the Times article have run:

Washington’s failure to win over Germany, France, Italy, Spain and other crucial European countries to its view on Ukraine and Georgia Missile Defense was considered by some countries of Central and Eastern Europe to have sent a message of alliance weakness to Moscow.

Yeah, you betcha.