WW1 started because after France’s brilliant tactic to forge alliance to ensure the next war would be so big and horrific that war would be unthinkable was revealed to be absolute bullocks because it failed to take into account that there were people who effectively wanted nothing more than to see the world burn.
Expanding NATO Willy nilly is similar in many respects. NATO was formed when interest of a much smaller group of nations found common cause but its expansion represents it becoming a sort of country club which needs someone to not be in it … and that alone made this new phase problematic.
The Eastern European nations should have forged their own alliance rather than become second fiddles to a number of continental nations that had as much demonstrated they viewed NATO as military welfare boosting local economies at American expense … well, unless the purpose of their jointing was to saddle on up to the bar….
Here’s the biggest problem with NATO, Turkey.
What is to stop Turkey from going rogue and starting things up with Russia, thus dragging NATO into the fight.
Erdogan is an evil man. He’s been patiently biding his time to step up, but Putin is in the way of his aspirations of rebuilding The Ottoman Empire. What better way to get a war started to cripple Russia, then allow Turkey to become the big dog and start threatening Europe, with millions of Muslim footsoldiers already embedded all over Europe.
Remember in 1999, when Kosovo was breaking off from Serbia, then NATO started bombing them. Russia promised to bail them out. And they never did. So I imagine there are a lot of Serbians and others who are ready to tell Russia to get bent. They don't have other Slavs backs.