One odd thing about posts like these is that their narrative only discusses NATO's actions vis-a-vis the expansion until Georgia or thereabouts, not the very important contextual step for why Eastern European countries were so eager to get under the NATO umbrella - the fact that Russia started intervening in its "near abroad" basically straight out of gate (Transnistria, Abhasia, South Ossetia), as well that, also starting basically right out of gate, there was a real scenario of revanchist and expansionist forces getting in power in Russia, either in an imperialist form or "restore Soviet Union" form (and Putin also started catering ideologically to these forces at least in some form pretty much from the start of his presidency). Of course we now see that E-E countries were hardly wrong in not dismissing these tendencies.
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Notes -
One odd thing about posts like these is that their narrative only discusses NATO's actions vis-a-vis the expansion until Georgia or thereabouts, not the very important contextual step for why Eastern European countries were so eager to get under the NATO umbrella - the fact that Russia started intervening in its "near abroad" basically straight out of gate (Transnistria, Abhasia, South Ossetia), as well that, also starting basically right out of gate, there was a real scenario of revanchist and expansionist forces getting in power in Russia, either in an imperialist form or "restore Soviet Union" form (and Putin also started catering ideologically to these forces at least in some form pretty much from the start of his presidency). Of course we now see that E-E countries were hardly wrong in not dismissing these tendencies.
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