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The US has not been marching NATO towards Russia. It's ex-eastern bloc countries willingly joining the alliance to be protected from Russian aggression. If Rus

The US has not been marching NATO towards Russia. It's ex-eastern bloc countries willingly joining the alliance to be protected from Russian aggression. If Russia did not have a long history of invading their neighbors, there would be no need or will to join the alliance.

roenxi 4y ago
If, say, Cuba joined a Russian military alliance of their own free will and started setting up a military installation with a couple of Russian missiles of uncertain providence, would the US tut-tut quietly or would it be a war situation? Because as I recall it was considered a major crisis that nearly doomed us all. And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Those countries should have been vetoed out of NATO after considering the look of the situation to Russia. There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia, and the alliance should have stopped expanding north-east when the USSR fell. Militaries deal in present realities, not how voluntarily people signed up for military alliances. Russia should not have to wonder how trustworthy the US is being (spoiler: the US is not trustworthy although they are a lot less capricious than the average nation). It is easy to see why they might have felt pressured to invade after the Ukrainian revolution, without needing to resort to "well Putin must just be that evil & crazy!".
- stoltzmann 4y ago
  If Cuba decides to align itself with the USSR, then it has the right to do so. Same as Ukraine has the right to align with the West rather than Russia. >There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia Why, just because Russia wants that, so that it's free to invade it's neighbors? People in Eastern Europe do want to be part of NATO for a simple reason - not to have to worry about their big neighbor deciding that it's time for a "liberation". This is not about aggression, this is about not being invaded.
- chimprich 4y ago
  > And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Not a great analogy. Ukraine had not joined NATO, and there seemed to be no prospect of it. The countries that actually did join NATO appear to be safe from Russian invasion. If the Baltic states hadn't been allowed to join NATO then Russia might already have a land bridge to Kaliningrad and we'd have lost some more liberal democracies.
js8 4y ago
The alliance as such would not be a problem. The problem is that its key member, USA, is Russia's nemesis, and that the common NATO defense is based on nuclear retaliation (that's why there are automatic triggers). I wouldn't mind if it was a military alliance of Russia neighbors and it disavowed the use of nuclear weapons. Then it would truly make the world safer, IMHO.

roenxi 4y ago

If, say, Cuba joined a Russian military alliance of their own free will and started setting up a military installation with a couple of Russian missiles of uncertain providence, would the US tut-tut quietly or would it be a war situation? Because as I recall it was considered a major crisis that nearly doomed us all. And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Those countries should have been vetoed out of NATO after considering the look of the situation to Russia. There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia, and the alliance should have stopped expanding north-east when the USSR fell. Militaries deal in present realities, not how voluntarily people signed up for military alliances. Russia should not have to wonder how trustworthy the US is being (spoiler: the US is not trustworthy although they are a lot less capricious than the average nation). It is easy to see why they might have felt pressured to invade after the Ukrainian revolution, without needing to resort to "well Putin must just be that evil & crazy!".

stoltzmann 4y ago
If Cuba decides to align itself with the USSR, then it has the right to do so. Same as Ukraine has the right to align with the West rather than Russia. >There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia Why, just because Russia wants that, so that it's free to invade it's neighbors? People in Eastern Europe do want to be part of NATO for a simple reason - not to have to worry about their big neighbor deciding that it's time for a "liberation". This is not about aggression, this is about not being invaded.
chimprich 4y ago
> And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Not a great analogy. Ukraine had not joined NATO, and there seemed to be no prospect of it. The countries that actually did join NATO appear to be safe from Russian invasion. If the Baltic states hadn't been allowed to join NATO then Russia might already have a land bridge to Kaliningrad and we'd have lost some more liberal democracies.

js8 4y ago

The alliance as such would not be a problem. The problem is that its key member, USA, is Russia's nemesis, and that the common NATO defense is based on nuclear retaliation (that's why there are automatic triggers). I wouldn't mind if it was a military alliance of Russia neighbors and it disavowed the use of nuclear weapons. Then it would truly make the world safer, IMHO.