This is not acceptable for the Americans because they would lose all their influence on events in Europe. In the Cold war times, NATO was aimed at an unified and immediate response to a short-term attack by a very powerful force. NATO of the future will not be that kind of organization. It’s going to be a mix of capabilities. Many nations capable of responses in a lot of different ways. Or NATO could send forces from a variety of member countries like it was done in the Balkan, and not to evolve the whole nation in the conflict. Every couple of years, a summit is held in one of the member countries to discuss current events, future approach and past achievements of the alliance. One of these was held last year in November in Prague, Czech republic. It was the most important summit in this decade. It was there where the future of NATO was decided. Representatives of all the member countries met to discuss this issue. This summit resolved that “NATO is not less important to our security today, NATO is more important”. As well, they agreed to add seven Eastern European states to the alliance in the future, bringing the total membership to 26. They also decided to transform the traditional defensive strategy to create a NATO response force of 21,000 troops armed with high-tech weapons and capable of quick deployment anywhere in the world as part of the war against terrorism. The leaders of the expanded alliance endorsed a plan for a new specialized division of labor in which members will commit themselves to concentrating their resources on developing capabilities in one or more areas, such as defense against weapons of mass destruction and long range transport of troops and equipment. When implemented, these commitments will go a long way toward satisfying some of the U.S. complaints about the poor military capabilities of the European allies. Another indicator that NATO is still wanted is the amount of countries that want to join. If it didn’t see need in it, why would they like to join? These are mostly eastern European countries that seek protection against not yet seen enemy. Some critics warn that dividing Europe to NATO and non-NATO would resemble the cold war. There is a big polemic about Russia. Now democratic Russia wants to join the alliance. This would be against all that NATO was created for. There is a possibility that Russia will enter the North Atlantic structure but it won’t happen anytime in the near future. All new members must meet strict criteria to enter. One of them is pure democracy.