"the onus is on you" I don't see why. "there's a wide array of reasonable measures" I don't see how they address the problem. "They're much better tailored

"the onus is on you" I don't see why. "there's a wide array of reasonable measures" I don't see how they address the problem. "They're much better tailored to limit the value of the Chinese nuclear deterrent than yours" I don't see why. "I wish your military invested in better early warning capabilities" Your wish is granted [0] "Your existing arsenal easily suffices for credible deterrence" Only if it survives the first strike. "joining NATO as well" Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland joined NATO much earlier than EU. "essentially a Russian provocation, by the way (a position I don't entirely share)" And the report of the official EU investigation doesn't agree either. "If you're dealing with an unstable country with political, economic and social issues of such a magnitude that it cannot be regarded as a reliable partner, yet one with most of the world's nukes, at some point you're going to start viewing it as a potential threat." I don't see why Russia couldn't be regarded as a reliable partner despite of its internal problems. Take gas and oil, for example. And I don't see how Russia was a threat to the EU countries. "Russia has created and continuously maintained a number of "frozen conflict" zones" Why do you think that Russia created them? The newly independent ex-USSR country are run by nationalists, their treatment of minorities within their countries is uncivilized, to put it mildly. Or is the problem that they are frozen? That's because Russia doesn't do things the NATO way - bombing a problematic country into stone age and achieving a regime change. "directly interfered into the political systems of virtually every ex-Soviet state" As did the US and the EU, including meddling in Russia's own elections[1]. "weaponized its gas exports for political aims" Or the transit countries weaponized their monopoly on the transit routes? "both sides squandered it" I don't see anything in Russia's actions even remotely comparable to NATO expansion. You've listed numerous internal problems in Russia, but how you jumped to the conclusion that they made Russia a threat to the EU is beyond by understanding. [0] http://www.russianspaceweb.com/eks-tundra-kosmos2541.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/eks-tundra-kosmos2541.html [1] http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html