U.S. Elites Agree on NATO Enlargement

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year renewed interest in enlarging NATO, and Finland and Sweden applied for membership a few months later. Finland finalized its membership in the organization in April, effectively doubling the size of NATO’s border with Russia. As for Sweden, Hungary and Turkey continue to block its accession, but a deal may be possible before NATO’s self-imposed deadline of July 11. Meanwhile, three other NATO partners—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine—have also expressed their desire to join the alliance. Some analysts have called for the admission of Austria as well, although the country remains committed to neutrality.

Proponents of NATO enlargement argue that it promotes Western democratic values, strengthens the U.S.-led liberal international order, and contributes to European stability. Opponents worry that adding new members to the organization threatens and provokes Russia. Unsurprisingly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revitalized conversations among both scholars and practitioners about enlarging NATO. The outcome of this debate has obvious and important implications for global security.

To better understand elite views within the United States on the issue, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute surveyed three groups: international relations (IR) experts at U.S. universities and colleges; individuals employed in offices or agencies responsible for creating or implementing U.S. foreign policy during the last three presidential administrations; and individuals affiliated with any of 75 largest IR and foreign-policy think tanks in the United States.

The surveys asked these groups about their support for NATO enlargement and their predictions about the organization’s growth in the next five years. The faculty survey launched on Oct. 13, 2022, and the survey of policymakers and think tank affiliates launched on Nov. 2, 2022; all three surveys closed on Jan. 17. The results reported below are based on answers from the 979 scholars, 291 policymakers, and 294 think tank affiliates who responded to the surveys. (Complete results and more information about TRIP’s methods can be found here.)

Foreign-policy practitioners frequently lament the lack of relevant academic knowledge in the field of international relations, while IR scholars bemoan policymakers’ focus on context-specific information. But on at least one issue, the scholars and practitioners seem to agree: NATO should enlarge its membership. This consensus is the most striking result across the surveys; it is especially surprising given recent research showing that think tank employees are more hawkish than IR scholars.

On average, all three groups of surveyed experts support enlargement efforts, believe that Sweden should be the next country to join NATO, and predict that it will in fact be the alliance’s next new member.

Should NATO expand?

To examine the level of academic and policy support for NATO enlargement, we asked the experts what they thought about admitting various countries to the alliance. Respondents indicated scores for each country on a 100-point scale, where zero represented “no support at all” and 100 represented “extremely strong support.” We reported the average scores. As shown below, there was remarkable agreement among policy (“beltway”) experts—which included both policymakers and think tankers—and academic (“faculty”) experts about enlarging NATO. Both groups strongly supported admission for Austria and especially for Sweden.

IR scholars indicated an average support level of 88.8 on a 100-point scale for Sweden, compared to 93.5 among policy elites. Average support for Sweden was more than 10 points higher than for the next highest country, Austria. Both groups of respondents also demonstrated majority support—an average of more than 50 points—for NATO admitting Ukraine and near-majority support for admitting Georgia and Moldova. In each case except that of Austria, IR faculty expressed slightly less support for admitting new countries to NATO than practitioners, but the differences were small.

Realist IR scholars, who argue that states are self-interested actors seeking to preserve their own security, supported NATO enlargement at lower levels than their liberal, constructivist, and non-paradigmatic academic colleagues. This trend applied regardless of the country in question, but the gap between IR realists and other academics was most pronounced when it came to Ukraine. Realists have long warned against NATO enlargement, which they suggest threatens Russia’s security. In 2019, five years after Russia annexed Crimea, political scientist John Mearsheimer went so far as to argue that “the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault.”

Ukraine aside, the differences between various schools of thought within the IR academy were small: On average, respondents ranked the countries in the same order when it came to whether they should be granted NATO membership.

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Which country should NATO admit next?

Academic and policy elites were also asked to estimate how likely each country was to become a full NATO member in the next five years, independent of their level of support for each country’s admission. Sweden again led the pack by a significant margin—more so than when respondents were asked which countries should join NATO. On average, faculty respondents recorded an 88 percent likelihood for Sweden’s accession, and policy respondents recorded an 89 percent likelihood.

Austria came second again, and no other country came close to passing the 50 percent mark. The results on Ukraine are striking: Despite strong support from both the faculty group and the beltway group for Ukrainian membership in NATO, neither thought it was all that likely (38 percent and 39 percent likelihood, respectively).

Viewed over time, in some cases it appears that both academic and policy elites’ predictions on NATO enlargement track closely with their preferences. The country respondents most supported for NATO membership—Sweden—was the same country respondents thought had the greatest likelihood of achieving membership within five years. In other cases, however, there were considerably lower-level predictions of the likelihood of a country’s membership than support for said membership.

For scholars, the possibility of Austria or Ukraine gaining NATO membership declined slightly between October 2022 and January. Estimates of Sweden’s likelihood of admission declined by an average of 9 percent during the period that Turkish objections to Swedish membership became more public. And in November and December 2022, there were slight to moderate increases in the predicted likelihood of Georgia, Moldova, or Ukraine joining NATO—followed by small declines in January.

The changes were not large, but they may have occurred in response to specific events. For example, the increases coincided with NATO’s renewed commitment to Ukrainian membership during meetings in Romania, while the declines coincided with intensifying Russian attacks in Ukraine at the start of the year.

Practitioners responded to the same events on the ground differently than IR scholars. The estimated possibility of Austria, Ukraine, or Sweden gaining NATO admission increased modestly between November 2022 and January, while the likelihood of Georgia or Moldova achieving membership in the next five years remained consistently low. In short, neither scholars nor practitioners changed their predictions considerably, but there was less fluctuation over time in practitioners’ predictions.

Many analysts have noted the gap between how scholars and practitioners approach foreign policy. Some have argued that proximity to the seat of power in Washington may increase practitioners’ hawkishness. On the related issues of the desirability and likelihood of NATO enlargement, however, our surveys found little daylight between the two groups. IR scholars and practitioners alike support extending NATO membership to Austria and Sweden—and to a lesser extent, to Ukraine. Policy elites support NATO admission for four of the five countries examined here at higher rates than academic elites, but the differences are small.

Experts’ predictions about which states will gain admission to NATO seem to follow their preferences for which countries should become members of the alliance. And while there are differences over time between scholars and practitioners, those differences are small. NATO enlargement is one issue on which the ivory tower and the beltway largely agree. Just as both Democrats and Republicans have agreed about the need to add members to the alliance, both groups surveyed here recognize a range of benefits, including strengthening burden-sharing across NATO, increasing military capability in Europe, and deterring Russian aggression.

At a time when the U.S. public continues to shy away from an active U.S. role in the world, there remains strong elite consensus around the need for sustained leadership from Washington in world affairs.