Soverign countries if invited, certainly have the right to join NATO. You don't think so?
I do think so. I question the wisdom of inviting them given the consequences of conflict with Russia. Who is benefiting? There is no necessity of a prearranged agreement to defend them. We don’t even know the issues yet. Seems dumb to agree to defend everyone without knowing the issue before hand. Join them when it happens and you have a chance to weigh it.
I see the need for some strategic locations for NATO. I think NATO is stupid to expand without regard to the negative reactions, especially in violation of previous agreements.
We see NATO as the good guys, because it is us. But too much concentrated power is never good. It may start out in the hands of good guys. It never seems to end that way. NATO is necessary. Super duper bigger and broader than life NATO would be a threat to everyone. Human nature is not capable of that. Corruption WILL set in. Viewing ourselves as immune to that is wrong, even minus the Russia issue.
Our first priority should be our own homeland.
Well, I don’t think so if NATO made a commitment not to expand in order to obtain Russia’s consent to German reunification. Here’s what George F. Kennan, America’s premier Cold War diplomat had to say about the first round of NATO expansion per the NYT in 1998
‘’I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,’’ said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ‘’I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.’’
‘’What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,’’ added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ‘’X,’’ defined America’s cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ‘’I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-now-a-word-from-x.html
The Russian argument in this regard is laughable: "hey, we occupied your country, enslaved your citizens, and sent a good portion of them to labor camps . . . but don't antagonize us by acting in anything other than our interest, ok?"