Every time this proposition comes up, I'm going to repost this comment (I apologize in advance for the repeat): This is valuable reading, from a military histo

Every time this proposition comes up, I'm going to repost this comment (I apologize in advance for the repeat): This is valuable reading, from a military historian frequently posted on HN: https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the- https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-... Here's one of the many good bits: ---- Instead, the clearest understanding of Putin’s complaints about NATO is that they are reflections of his real fears, but that as diplomatic negotiating tools, they were red herrings, designed to create exactly the sort of smokescreen that some media personalities worked to create and exploit domestically. The ‘tell’ here in many ways were the initial demands, which amounted to rolling back NATO positions to pre-1997 status; such demands would be utterly unacceptable to NATO countries (like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland) who would thus be left outside NATO’s line of protection. Putin – and the Russian Foreign Ministry – knew those demands were obvious non-starters, that’s why they made them – presumably to generate that smokescreen and to try to divide NATO internally. But the demands themselves were never serious, as Putin’s actions this week prove. ---- The "promise Ukraine won't join NATO" demand was not made in good faith and conceding it would not have mattered.