Major issues facing the Nato summit in Bucharest call for a balancing act. The fact is, however, that on some issues it is simply not possible to achieve a compromise.

Ukraine either becomes part of Nato or it does not. France, an important player among some other Western European players, believes that it should not. Moscow believes that it should not, on what has become the traditional post-Soviet grounds that Ukraine in Nato equals a threat to Russian security. Reportedly, polls in Ukraine indicate that domestic opinion is not in favour of Nato membership. The United States believes that an invitation should be issued, after following what have become the traditional preliminary forms of association. It is not an issue on which compromise appears possible; the principle is similar to that of the cliche that no one can be slightly pregnant.

There has been talk that, while no compromise is possible on the question of whether an individual country should be invited, the Ukraine and Georgia questions could be linked to a trade-off involving the US and Russia over the US plan for a missile shield with installations in some Central and Eastern European states. The prospect of such a trade-off appears to have some prospect of viability, even though while it could be made to make political sense, it makes virtually no sense at all in strategic terms, whether viewed from the perspective of Washington or of Moscow. Getting your missile shield in return for not inviting one or another country into Nato? Which is the greater or lesser gain from the point of view of those who implement the approach styled by the Bush administration in the “war on terror”? Further, even if Moscow agrees to such a trade-off, which would it find more reassuring? One less former Soviet Bloc country in Nato, or no missile shield?

There is a deeper reality, as well. Nato’s member states do not think and act in uniformity. The intense debate over the alliance’s engagement in Afghanistan is evidence of this. Were any more evidence needed, the most obvious example would be that in Bush’s war in Iraq, no more than a scant number of Nato countries are deployed in alliance with US forces – considering that far from all Nato states backed the war in the first place. Nato is an alliance, not a merger, and by no means in all circumstances would its members always act in concert. Russia knows this, but still prefers not to have too many former Soviet satellites trooping over to what it sees as a potentially hostile camp. The missile shield, too, is of debatable military value, although from the point of view of the US and its closest allies it is better there, as a defensive measure, than not there at all. There is, of course, an irony to Russia’s protests that the missile shield could be used against Russia. In the age of the missile-carrying submarine, it is questionable whether the missile shield plan really could make much difference – and certainly not in the face of any country that has surveillance satellites keeping an eye from orbit. Russia has such satellites. Terrorists, or states supporting terrorism, hopefully do not.

There are other “balancing act” questions facing the summit, such as whether there will be two or three formal membership invitations, the one to Macedonia being in question as the “name dispute” with Greece dragged on as the final hours to the summit’s opening ticked by. At the time of writing, it was not clear whether there would be a compromise that would admit an invitation being issued to Macedonia. Perhaps if the summit came and went without an invitation, a new effort could be made to achieve a compromise without the hothouse atmosphere of the run-up to the Bucharest summit.

In the end, on the eve of the Nato meeting, it appeared that what was likely was quite a lot of theatre and spectacle from the players. But balancing acts were likely to be rare.