> Member nations in NATO are not equal. Never have been never will be. Member nations are certainly not. Potential partner/member nations are equal with extrem

> Member nations in NATO are not equal. Never have been never will be. Member nations are certainly not. Potential partner/member nations are equal with extremely rare realpolitik exceptions like Turkey. > In not so many words, it meant that Russia would have to join the transnational gang as a foot soldier (Estonia) rather than a capo (UK) let alone a boss (US). Explain a diplomatic sequence that sees Russia after the dissolution of the USSR immediately accede to the NATO informal equivalent of the UNSC. IMHO it was on Russia to counter-offer the NATO suspicion and initiate MOU working sessions to create a trust building framework to demonstrate good faith over an agreed upon period of years instead of demanding "capo" or "boss" status along with being read into the military secrets such status entails. > There is similar German commentary on the character of minority groups in their country from 1939. That's an unnecessarily inflammatory response. I get it, this is a heated topic, but I'm looking to shed light without heat here. What else explains the predictive power of multiple former Warsaw Bloc nations' intelligence and diplomatic warnings to their Western counterparts, full decades before they happened, based upon not much beyond this national character defect assessment (at least with publicly-available information)? I can easily buy that such a defect assessment is wrong, but what other analyses were those agencies using? What explains the difference between the restructuring outcomes of Japan and that of the USSR? How much substance is there to Zeihan's thesis that if Russia does not secure various chokepoints in Eastern Europe it will be invaded in the 21st century and how does that square with its situation along the shared border with the PRC? So many fertile topics to explore and I'm sure someone is hanging around here that can point us to the extant literature that attempts to probe these areas and more, without such heated, non-substantive contributions to the discussion. I will plainly state I know functionally nothing about what is going on in Russia-West relations other than what I see in the mainstream, and I invite anyone including you to contribute your knowledge to the discussion to learn.