Enlargement of NATO
As of 2018, NATO officially recognizes four aspiring members: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina within Bosnia and Herzegovina has expressed willingness to join NATO, however, it faces consistent political pressure from Republika Srpska, the other political entity in the country, alongside its partners in Moscow. Macedonia has been prevented from joining the alliance by Greece, one effect of the Macedonian naming dispute. Future expansion is currently a topic of debate in several countries outside the alliance, and countries like Sweden, Finland, and Serbia have open political debate on the topic of membership, while in countries like Ukraine, support and opposition to membership is tied to ethnic and nationalist ideologies. The incorporation of countries formerly part of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union has been a cause of increased tension between NATO countries and Russia.
Macedonia (region)
Republic of Macedonia, Croatia and Albania were qualified to join NATO and an invitation for those three countries was planned to be issued on the NATO summit in Bucharest (Romania), in April 2008. Before the beginning of the summit, the American president Bush said that NATO would make a historic decision on the admission of three Balkan nations: Croatia, Albania and Macedonia; and that the United States strongly supported inviting these nations to join NATO. However, during the summit NATO leaders decided not to extend a membership invitation to Macedonia because Greece vetoed the move after the dispute over the name issue. The Macedonian representative and negotiator with Greece in the name issue complained that the Republic of Macedonia was punished not because it had failed to fulfill NATO accession criteria, but because it had been trying to defend its national identity. The NATO leaders agreed to extend a membership invitation for Macedonia as soon as the name issue with Greece is resolved, but until now no progress has been made in the negotiations between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece to resolve the name issue.