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Foreign ministers from the 26 NATO member countries met in Brussels, Belgium, on March 6 to discuss the alliance's enlargement plans.

Foreign ministers representing the 26 states of the NATO alliance met in Brussels, Belgium, on March 6 to discuss enlargement policy. At present, only one country is guaranteed to get a green light, with a handful of others likely to be deferred — or perhaps something just shy of ignored.

The talks are in preparation for the alliance’s full summit scheduled for April. That summit will be a defining one in the alliance’s history, and the broad issues under discussion will be of a strategic nature. The March 6 meeting in Brussels is explicitly about the political niceties of enlargement, ergo only the presence of the foreign (and not defense) ministers.

The one country almost sure to get in is Croatia. The new government formed in Zagreb is the most politically diverse in the country’s history, even including a Serbian faction: the Serbian Democrats. NATO’s policy in the region first and foremost has been a resolution to the ethnic wars that have plagued the former Yugoslavia. Croatia’s formation of a multi-ethnic coalition without a Western hammer over its head was perhaps the best way possible to ensure firm invitations to both NATO and the European Union. The first of those organizations is almost certain to formalize its relationship at the full summit in April, with the European Union likely to follow suit later in 2008.