> Nobody is forcing anyone to join the "Resist the violent bully in your doorstep" club.
That kind of club might be fine, but NATO simply isn't it. Again, you're not asking the question, what is in it for the U.S. (to promise protection - with nukes - to those countries).
Look at my country - Czechia. After the end of Cold war, in the context of NATO, we have done more for American security than America did for ours. We had soldiers in Afghanistan and 11 of them died. During the same period, no American soldier has died defending Czech Republic.
> It just seems to happen naturally when the violent bully starts attacking their neighbours.
NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone. I think it was a mistake - EU should have created its own defense, and start from a clean slate.
Anyway, I don't care much about the question of historic guilt. I commented here because I think western "leaders" should be honest about their goals vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and they aren't.
Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
> NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone.
NATO is not some loaf of bread sitting on a windowsill that expands on its own. Most countries in Eastern Europe worked feverishly to join NATO. Why? Because their leaders had seen the grainy VHS tapes from the 1994–1996 First Chechen War, showing horrific Russian atrocities against civilians, similar to what many had personally seen or even experienced in the 1940s and 1950s. These images dispelled any illusion that the Russian Federation was more civil than the USSR or that it would respect the sovereignty and self-determination of other peoples.
By the mid-1990s, Russia had already employed its strategy of setting up fake separatist movements to instigate armed conflicts in Europe, and a good chunk of Moldova remains under Russian military occupation to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistrian_War
Nobody wanted to become the target of the next artificial "separatist movement" that would drain resources, hinder economic development, block EU integration, and leave the country vulnerable to full-scale invasion like Ukraine experienced in 2014 and then again in 2022. In an alternate timeline, Eastern Europe could have ended up like a series of Moldovas. Very poor, stagnating countries, constantly battling Russian meddling in their internal affairs.
Even 30 years ago, this threat was obvious to anyone familiar with Russia. For example, here's Chechen president Dudayev, a former commander of a Soviet nuclear bomber base, predicting the future in a 1995 interview as the Russians were hunting him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IavEOx3hUAk
Sorry, but what you're describing is American exceptionalism, in line with PNAC for instance.
> Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
Precisely what led to this conflict, the idea that the Eastern Europe (or now specifically Ukraine) should be "owned" by some superpower.
I am not a fan of Russia, in fact, I work for American company and I got rich thanks to that, and I generally like Americans, but if you don't see how incredibly patronizing this is, I don't know what to tell you. (I mean, Eastern Europe aside, the idea that for example Germany (or France), one of the largest economies in the world, needs some help from Americans to defend themselves is ridiculous.)
And paradoxically, the islamophobic sentiment is so strong in Eastern Europe today that most people would actually agree with the Russian approach to the Chechen war, unfortunately. Keep in mind Russia is not that different from U.S. when it comes to waging foreign wars.
The idea that war is in any case justifiable is just something that never works out as a consistent moral principle, and that's true for NATO's support for Ukraine as well (though I don't have a problem with Ukrainians defending their country, I think it's the right thing to do).
But once you start using violence as a means to revenge, or to regain the territory, you have morally lost it (which is what NATO is being asked by Ukraine). In Palestine, most of the world recognizes that the problem of Israeli colonization and apartheid has to be resolved through peaceful means (my preferred solution would be one state), not through Palestinian violence, despite all the Israeli violence (which is more than 10x) towards Palestinians. The same principle should be applied to Ukraine-Russia relations.
That kind of club might be fine, but NATO simply isn't it. Again, you're not asking the question, what is in it for the U.S. (to promise protection - with nukes - to those countries).
Look at my country - Czechia. After the end of Cold war, in the context of NATO, we have done more for American security than America did for ours. We had soldiers in Afghanistan and 11 of them died. During the same period, no American soldier has died defending Czech Republic.
> It just seems to happen naturally when the violent bully starts attacking their neighbours.
NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone. I think it was a mistake - EU should have created its own defense, and start from a clean slate.
Anyway, I don't care much about the question of historic guilt. I commented here because I think western "leaders" should be honest about their goals vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and they aren't.