NATO and especially USA are not really interested or objectively forced to extend the Alliance and include Romania in the new wave. A study realized by the American expert James M. Goldgeier from Brookings Institution, entitled "Not if, but when: USA's decision to extend NATO" explains the way in which the Americans decided to accept countries from the Central and South-eastern Europe in NATO in a very original way. First of all, Goldgeier describes the process through which the Washington high officials decided to extend the Alliance. Initially, they rejected the idea of a possible extension: "If one analyzes the opinions of the 1993 US legislative or executive, it is very difficult to find someone who thought that the NATO extension was a good idea". Moreover, "the army was not willing to extend the engagement of defending NATO members from a possible attack". But how did the idea of extension become a part of Clinton's plans? Goldgeier's answer is both simple and interesting: when Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and a few members of the Administration suggested him to do that, Clinton couldn't say "no". Then, it was too late to say "no" and moreover, he began liking this idea. But there are a few things which should be analyzed a little bit more thoroughly. When this problem was first brought into discussion, the Americans were not objectively interested in extending NATO. So they weren't the ones who had this initiative. Secondly, the idea of a NATO extension came from the states which were interested in becoming NATO members. Havel's and Walesa's international fame played a decisive role. It is only after the idea of extension had been accepted theoretically that the pros and cons appeared. A second major conclusion presented in Goldgeier's study is that the members of the civilian American society who supported this idea were the ones who actually transformed the pre