The timing for NATO's 50th birthday could not be worse. But who could have foreseen that a year ago, when President Clinton ordered all stops pulled out to make the Washington event an unforgettable celebration, the alliance would be dropping tons of bombs on a European capital?
With over 40 heads of state or government, ministers of foreign affairs and defence, their entourages and the media, this week will see the biggest crush of foreign leaders in Washington since the funeral of president John F. Kennedy in 1963.
It will dwarf the original event on April 4th, 1949, when 10 European countries joined the US and Canada in signing the North Atlantic Treaty, called the Treaty of Washington. (Ireland, incidentally, was informally asked to join but the then Fine Gael-led coalition government refused, saying that it would not be possible to be in a defensive alliance with a country - Britain - with which we had a territorial dispute, over Northern Ireland.)
This week the 24 NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries, including neutrals such as Switzerland and Sweden, will join the 19 NATO members in the anniversary celebrations, but Ireland will be one of the few European absentees. So far, Russia has not indicated whether it will attend because of the NATO air strikes.
Although there have been calls to postpone the three-day round of speeches, lunches, dinners and gala evenings, it is going ahead, but toned-down. The NATO flypast may be dropped. Lounge suits will replace tuxedos at the dinners and tentative plans to hire show-biz celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion have been shelved.
The ceremonies are now being called a "commemoration" rather than a "celebration". The pictures of the suffering Kosovan refugees and the reports of killings and mass graves will be a grim backdrop to an event where NATO is to agree on a new vision and "strategic concept" for its future.
Republican Senator John Warner, the influential chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, has suggested that NATO postpone stating its new aims and "wait for a reasonable period until lessons learned from Kosovo can be fully assessed". But the NATO intervention in Kosovo has answered one of the questions to be raised this week, namely, whether the alliance can take on missions outside the territory of its members. Under-Secretary of State Mr Thomas Pickering says that "while nobody desired to have this particular crisis at this particular time, it is another opportunity for us to indicate how important, serious and significant NATO is in dealing with the future of Europe."
The crisis over Kosovo has "helped to resolve the question of allied commitment, resolve and willingness to take action in regard to a real security crisis in Europe that has potential to erupt in a really serious way", Mr Pickering says. But the "new strategic concept" laying down the blueprint for NATO's future which is to be approved in Washington may not spell out other areas where the alliance is ready to intervene. The US would like to designate the Middle East and the Gulf but now says this is unlikely.
The crisis has meant that a special session of the 19 NATO leaders will be devoted to Kosovo. So far, the alliance has stayed united on the air strikes. President Clinton will be anxious to ensure that this solidarity continues, especially with the three new members, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The debate is hotting up here over the introduction of NATO ground troops into Kosovo to prevent further ethnic cleansing and to act as a protecting force for returning refugees. The ground forces issue will be high on the summit agenda.
The Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, has said that the summit "will focus simultaneously on what has been and is, and what will be. . .including every aspect of the situation in Kosovo and the surrounding region".
Experts from the Brookings Institute think-tank agree that Kosovo is a "defining moment" for NATO. If the alliance cannot defeat a "tin-pot dictator" like President Slobodan Milosevic, its credibility is finished, a Brookings seminar was told last week. A lot of credibility will be at stake at this week's 50th anniversary.