> The argument attempted now is that we should not escalate.
We have already escalated. NATO has been encroaching on Russia's borders for 20+ years now. Our foreign policies are one of the main causal factors in the current war where thousands of people have died and where nuclear exchange is now on the table. I think it's time to reevaluate that strategy.
NATO did nothing to expand. It was those countries that wanted to join! Which brings us to the second point:
> Our foreign policies are one of the main causal factors in the current war
Typical victim-aggressor reversal. It is Russia and its behavior, since forever, that made the neighbors fearful and desire NATO membership for protection against a vicious and aggressive neighbor.
By the way, I speak a bit of Russian, have been to both Russia and Ukraine - East and West of the country - multiple times and have connections to people doing business there since the 1990s and we regularly converse. I'm not as knowledgeable as a real insider, but I'm also far form an armchair commenter. Also, I was a mix of sympathetic and willfully ignorant towards Russia all the way until 24 February. And it was Russian behavior during and accompanying the war, not that I (initially) cared much about the fate of Ukraine I have to admit. I realized I had suppressed and filtered a lot over the years, like most others.
> I think it's time to reevaluate that strategy.
I agree - we need to be much more forceful and less forgiving to Russian threats and atrocities!
> NATO did nothing to expand. It was those countries that wanted to join!
NATO decides whether and how to expand their membership. They decide based on strategic considerations, like whether Russia would see allowing a member to join as a threat. NATO violated agreements with Russia not to expand towards Russia's borders over the past 20 years, and Russia's paranoia and aggression made this outcome predictable. In fact, many people predicted this would happen decades ago if NATO were to expand this way.
This is not excusing the aggressor's behaviour, this is a simple recognition that if you poke a bully, he's going to punch you in the face. This doesn't mean you shouldn't stand up to him, but it does mean that if you have a fragile peace with a nuclear bully, you should be careful about how you threaten that peace. We should have learned these lessons decades ago during the cold war, but seemed to have forgotten them.
> It is Russia and its behavior, since forever, that made the neighbors fearful and desire NATO membership for protection against a vicious and aggressive neighbor.
Yes, that's a primary reason NATO was formed. Of course they want membership, that's perfectly normal and predictable. Ukraine would have joined long ago too but everyone recognized that that would have been a serious provocation, and ultimately a bad idea. It seems they thought they could incrementally creep towards Russia's borders and Russia wouldn't notice. They thought wrong.
> NATO violated agreements with Russia not to expand towards Russia's borders over the past 20 years, and Russia's paranoia and aggression made this outcome predictable.
This is a persistent myth that is not reality, the soviet president at the time even says that no such promise was ever made.
The majority of political and diplomatic agreements are more informal and not encoded in written law, and often happen via back channels. Your own article acknowledges such an understanding existed:
> To be sure, the former Soviet president [Gorbachev] criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990
If your quibble is with my use of the term "agreement" vs. "assurances", then we can just agree that there was no formal agreement, but that doesn't really change the argument. If this understanding didn't exist, why didn't Ukraine join NATO years ago? Because there was an understanding going back to the 1990s that Russia felt threatened by NATO and that expanding in this fashion could provoke an escalation of hostilities between nuclear powers, and this was sort of thing should probably be avoided lest we start another cold war or worse.
To be clear, I'm sure this is merely one excuse Putin among many is using, the point being that not giving loons excuses to legitimize their actions is generally a good idea.
> The Massandra Accords set the stage for the ultimately successful trilateral talks. As the United States mediated between Russia and Ukraine, the three countries signed the Trilateral Statement on January 14, 1994. Ukraine committed to full disarmament, including strategic weapons, in exchange for economic support and security assurances from the United States and Russia...
> 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances
> To solidify security commitments to Ukraine, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances on December 5, 1994. A political agreement in accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Accords, the memorandum included security assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine’s territory or political independence. The countries promised to respect the sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.
> 2009 Joint Declaration by Russia and the United States
> Russia and the United States released a joint statement in 2009 confirming that the security assurances made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum would still be valid after START expired in 2009.
> NATO decides whether and how to expand their membership
You avoid the topic you find inconvenient because it completely destroys your strange notions: The nations asked NATIO to join.
There is no reason not to protect them from their aggressive neighbor!!
Why does it make any sense in your mind to let them be the victims of Russia and claim that this is somehow "correct"?
If Russia does not want NATO so close, maybe they should try a different approach towards their neighbors? Just an idea. It works for a lot of other countries who have zero fear towards a much stronger neighbor.
> There is no reason not to protect them from their aggressive neighbor
There is, and that is antagonizing Russia into a conflict. We don't have to let them be victims of Russia, as we aren't with Ukraine, but we also don't have to antagonize Russia. We can just agree to leaves these countries as neutral buffer zones.
The same way Ukraine stayed neutral for so long: with agreements that NATO wouldn't encroach/allow membership as long as Russia doesn't expand. Sometimes that's the best you can (and should) do when the opposition has nuclear weapons because you don't want to risk escalating.
Such agreements existed at the time and NATO continuously violated them in expanding membership towards Russia. It was a dangerous game and a lot of people have died because of it and because of Putin's paranoia.
Ukraine applied to NATO AFTER they got their land annexed, not before. Also, before Feb 24th, Ukraine is still years away from being accepted into NATO.
So no, whatever the real reason for the SMO was (highly likely to be oil), it was not because Putin/Russia was scared of being attack by NATO, and the agreement to not joining NATO will not stop the invasion.
I fail to see what this has to do with the Baltics, which is what you asked about. Ukraine was making plenty of overtures to NATO and NATO's continued encroachment was definitely a threat to Russia. I'm not sure how you can so definitively conclude that Putin was not worried about this encroachment.
Edit: I mean, just look at the recent history of Ukraine's friendly intermingling with NATO just prior to the invasion:
You can certainly argue that this was just an excuse for Putin to invade, but there's little evidence to be so confident in that conclusion, and plenty of countervailing evidence.
We have already escalated. NATO has been encroaching on Russia's borders for 20+ years now. Our foreign policies are one of the main causal factors in the current war where thousands of people have died and where nuclear exchange is now on the table. I think it's time to reevaluate that strategy.