… to answer your question.
I guess it’s a chicken/egg question. Does Russia get aggressive because NATO has expanded to its borders, or has NATO expanded because Russia seems to want to take back what was once hers?
The Baltic nations, once Russian, became independent, USSR took them back, they regained independence and are wary of Russia wanting them back in the fold.
Same is true of Poland. Stalin, working with Hitler and later FDR/Churchill took back and got to keep what was once Russian Poland.
Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary all have ‘enjoyed’ Russian/Soviet occupation and don’t want to enjoy it again.
And Finland, once a duchy under the Russian crown, invaded by the Soviets twice, now has joined NATO.
Doubt if Finland plans military operations in the Middle East, whether NATO calls on them or not.
… to answer your question.
Mizu san, I donot disagre with your summary of history of these various nations.
If you examine NATO , you will see that it shifted from being a defensive alliance to an imperial alliance with what NATO did in Yugoslavia in 1999, and certainly what it did in Libya on suppost of Obama’s “ Arab Spring. At that time Putin stopped NATO from continuing into Syria, where the mass of Obama/NATO created masses of Muslim refugees were like an arrow pointed at the soft underbelly of Russia and Western Europe .
NATO now is not the NATO of 1960, when it was a defensive alliance. Now its a neo Imperial alliance run by Globalists and One World, DAVOS style politicians. Almost to a man they feel morally superior to the old guard of Europe, are climate change cultists and definers of what humanity is and what it is not in their supposed superiority. GAdaffi suffered their definition of being not human.
IN our country the USA we see them destroy the economy and the freedom loving middle class, as well as the national system of justice. Their moral perfection knows no bounds, and it will be imposed on those who differ with tyrannical force.
These are the people who run NATO, and what they are doing in Ukraine with their neo-fascist henchmen comprises one of the greatest crimes in modern history. They have extended a war between Russia and Ukraine, metering the supply of weapons to Ukraine in order to achieve a continuous war of attrition instead of victory for Ukraine.
Now the world has changed. We have a new alliance between Russia and China, and a situation where the US dollar is in danger of being unseated as the worlds reserve currency. And unless we deliver an end to the Ukraine war, America will see a depression unlike any in its history, all thanks to NATO becoming an alliance of aggression instead of an alliance of defense.
NATO maintains that it is a defensive alliance still today. But in fact it is not.
Donald Trump needs to put that cat back in the bag, or we in America will suffer horribly.
Finland was not a member of NATO, but it still sent some troops to Afghanistan.