VDM Levkovska, L: The Limits Of Rhetorical Entrapment:

NATO enlargement has been recognized as the most successful policy of the Alliance since the end of the Cold War. The following work employs the rhetorical action conceptual lens, which explains the enlargement puzzle for the first and the second round of NATO expansion. However, the third round of enlargement questions the relevance of the rhetorical action and places this theoretical framework in the same group of theories that fail to explain the enlargement policy of the Alliance. This thesis will first examine how the argumentative strategies employed by the proponents to enlarge to candidate countries at the 1997 Madrid Summit and the 2002 Prague Summit succeeded in persuading opponents of enlargement to uphold to their commitments. Secondly, this thesis shows how rhetorical action failed to influence the enlargement decisions taken at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. The third round of enlargement and the outcome brings the debate back to rationalist conceptual lens where the rational preferences dominate accession decisions of the Alliance. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the rational calculations are in the center of NATO s enlargement decision making policy.