The Nato summit opens today, with Georgia and Ukraine lobbying the alliance to continue its steady eastern march. But this process is undermining, not improving, US security. Countries that have been variously occupied, partitioned and dominated prefer not to trust in the goodwill of their large neighbours. Indeed, Russia's popular eruption against Estonia over the removal of a second world war memorial offers a stark reminder that Russia has yet to join Europe in heart and mind.
To the question 'what to do?', the answer is obvious: enlist the services of a benevolent, distant superpower. Europe might offer a good economic home, but the very ennui that renders so many formerly great powers harmless diminishes the security value of a military alliance with them.
America is different. The US possesses the world's most powerful military and is ever ready to go to war. That is why so many governments pine for its embrace.
Surely, the alliance aids Central and Eastern European efforts at continental integration. Joining the exclusive club is particularly satisfying for countries that spent years looking in, across the Iron Curtain.
But the most important factor is Article 5 of the Nato charter - which creates the possibility of turning a war with Russia, however unlikely, into Europe's, and, more importantly, America's, war.
It's a policy which makes sense in Tbilisi, Kiev and elsewhere in the region. But it doesn't make sense in Washington.