Wrongly or not, those countries are members of NATO.
***Which is why we should be waving a piece of paper around saying “peace in our time”, with a NATO membership for Ukraine on that paper.
We have a defensive treaty with them.
***And all it takes is a defensive treaty with Ukraine to make this problem go away.
We should not have let several of them in, but it’s too late.
***NATO is obviously working because even Pootypoot, who is a bully, isn’t invading NATO countries like Estonia and Lithuania.
We shouldn’t further extend our military.
***We SHOULD further extend NATO and make Europe pay for it.
We should scale back the empire,
***NATO is not an empire.
over time and as treaties expire, unless Europe is willing to step up and pay
***There is a tiny bit of wisdom here but unfortunately you surrounded it by bullsnot. It kills the taste of your wisdom.
and take responsibility for crises in their geographical region.
***You have no basis for your assertion. My basis is that pootypoot aint invading lithuania, Estonia, or other rinkydink countries because he knows it would trigger the joint defense clause. He IS invading Ukraine because they DON’T have it. He would scamper away if they joined NATO tomorrow.
***Which is why we should be waving a piece of paper around saying “peace in our time”, with a NATO membership for Ukraine on that paper.
Too late for that now.
Anyway, it didn’t work the last time someone intoned “peace in our time”.