The Barack Obama administration should endorse immediate accession of Macedonia to NATO at the upcoming Lisbon summit and to position itself as a champion of NATO enlargement, suggests Sally McNamara - a political analysts at the US Heritage Foundation - in an analysis called "NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept: Five Markers for Success".

"Macedonia met all of the membership criteria and completed NATO's Membership Action Plan (MAP) requirements in 2008. The country is one of the highest per capita providers of troops for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan," says McNamara.

According to her, NATO should rally behind its open-door policy and send the message in the new Strategic Concept that the Alliance is open for business.

McNamara says that the NATO summit in Lisbon comes at a precarious time for the Alliance as NATO operations in Afghanistan approach their 10th year and at a time when US President Barack Obama's poor handling of relations with Central and Eastern Europe has caused some allies to question the credibility of NATO's guarantee of their territorial integrity.

The success of the new NATO concept, according to McNamara, will be guaranteed and assessed in line with several indicators: equitable sharing of the burden among NATO members of the common defense; reaffirmation that the collective defense requires NATO to protect its borders and act beyond its geography to ensure its security; a protect-and-defend strategy that includes layered defense missiles and the continued presence of US tactical nuclear weapons on European soil; a recommitment to further enlargement of the Alliance and a restatement of the primacy of NATO in Europe's security architecture.