So if my small country would be neighbor to US we would need to ask US permissions for stuff? If the answer is "sure, for X and Y US should approve because it

So if my small country would be neighbor to US we would need to ask US permissions for stuff? If the answer is "sure, for X and Y US should approve because it is so big" then this means that US neighbors are not really independent but vassal countries? If yes, please have your preferred politician admit this. I am from eastern Europe and I can tell you we did not want to enter in NATO because we love USA and agree with it 100% , we did it to get into this defensive alliance to protect ourselves from Russia. Nobody here wants to sacrifice their live to bring freedom or Western values to Russians, we want to be left alone and we want to be able to do aliances and partnerships without the big bully to veto it. If you listen to all of Putin speeches and not some cherry picked parts, you will see he admitted he wants to restore the URSS , he started the war to bring back is "brothers" into URSS and this NATO stuff is upsetting him because if he waits until Ukraine or Moldove enters NATO he will not be able to make URSS great again.