Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance (NATO) in history toward another major power would not end well. - The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.
The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich security conference. .......“Nato has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. Nato expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”
The Obama administration’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro‐Russia president was the single most brazen provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. -Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway ‘with a vengeance’
They’re simply not getting it. The Ukes were ambivalent about NATO membership all along. That’s why little snot countries like Estonia got in, but the Ukes have had an on-again/off-again relationship with the NATO MAP.
What the Ukes wanted was to be left alone. They wanted aggressive neutrality. They even gave up nukes towards that desire, only to be betrayed by us and invaded by their bully neighbor twice.
Putin blaming NATO expansion is like your wife having a headache. Any excuse will do.