Kommersant has a worthwhile discussion of the MAP-less path for NATO military-to-military cooperation between Georgia and Ukraine. Again, a lot of the interoperability and military standards development is already taking place on the ground. But the key here seems to be steering clear not only of describing this as a fast-track membership path, or even a way to scrap the MAPs altogether, but actually limiting it to the politically undefined gray area that doesn’t set off Russia’s alarms. In other words, the Gates “no red lines” approach.
The Kommersant article suggests that the Bush administration has already walked the proposal back from its initial formulation (scrap the MAPs and full steam ahead to membership) to a more restrained version (ongoing but politically undefined military cooperation). So my initial reaction (i.e. that it made no sense) wasn’t so offbase after all.