ABSTRACT
A Russia-in-NATO outcome may be strategically inescapable in the long run; it has meanwhile been approached slowly, resisted at each step yet brought nearer with each step. Strategic necessities, coupled with the logic of Russia's Westernization, are likely to impel the forward movement to continue; a feeling that it is absurd is likely to remain widespread and impel the resistance to continue. The American public has massively but passively supported inclusion of Russia in NATO throughout the 1990s, according to poll after poll on the subject. However, much of the elite was for a long time skeptical, both of Russia's intentions and of NATO's capacity to survive such a change; and it is the elite that take the initiative in such complicated matters of international organizational restructuring. Proceeding with Membership Action Plan (MAP) implementation does not mean proceeding pedantically until every detail is fulfilled completely, but, as has been done with the smaller candidates.
