14 new nato members since 1991 when we promised them no new members and talked of letting them in
How would we feel
I don’t think Putin believes anything we say anymore
I do believe we stopped the Turkey talks last spring causing Putins SMO and limited invasion to fail to force an agreement
And here we are
We just want Russia to bleed
And use Uke bodies and our stuff to accomplish that
If I were Putin where he is now I’d get more than I would have taken last spring in a deal
And I suspect he will
I don’t know how it escaped your analysis, but the breakup of the USSR ended all commitments the US made to the USSR.
None of which ever said that INDEPENDENT states couldn’t join NATO. The draft pitch from James Baker related to countries inside the iron curtain. Once the USSR and its iron curtain ceased to exist, so did the limited scope of the now nonexistent obligation. QED.
Russia itself confirmed that state of affairs by signing the Belovezha Accords and recognising the Eastern Bloc independent nations as UN Charter members.
Both actions removed any obligations inside the Warsaw Pact, to give a damn what misty eyed USSR nostalgia freaks thought about NATO membership.
I’d read the charter and the accords if I were you. Both of them PERMITTED the freed countries to join NATO or CSTO - and DENIED Russia a veto in either direction.
“How would we feel” - what a stupid statement. How a minority fringe view in the USA applies, is irrelevant to how Eastern Europe feels. If you were Polish, or Latvian, or Finnish, you’d understand it differently.
As someone else said, the false analogy is bull. It’d be more accurate if the pitch was, choosing to invade Cuba to stop it hosting Russian training exercises while being intensely relaxed about Mexico having been a fully paid up member of the same alliance for fifteen years, doing the same training, and more... And ALSO without once pointing a medium or long range missile in the direction of the USA.