[CapricornNoble]

>>>No one forced Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia to join NATO

No, but the US should have carefully measured (and probably rejected) any interest from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine. Accession into NATO requires unanimous endorsement from all extant members. The most powerful member of the alliance saying "No" sends an even stronger signal.

And then we should have offered military training, maybe even subsidized armament sales (aka "foreign aid") to encourage a strong self-defense capability....but NO formalized or even informal assurances of mutual defense, and no US assets based in their borders. I think that would have been a smart compromise: help these countries make themselves too costly to invade, without making Russia more paranoid and without growing our "surface area" of treaty risks.

[dragonwriter]

> No, but the US should have carefully measured (and probably rejected) any interest from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Why?

Should we also have rejected the interest of the Russian Federation expressed first in a letter from their President to NATO in 1991, formalized when they joined the Partnership for Peace in 1994, and at the time the first three on your list were admitted still being actively worked toward by both the Russian and NATO sides?

[CapricornNoble]

>>>Why?

So that we could focus 100% of our attention on stuffing the CCP Dragon back in a box before it's too late.

>>>Should we also have rejected the interest of the Russian Federation

Compare the strategic utility of Russia in our alliance (#2 nuclear power in the world, extremely large military, shares a border with China) with the strategic utility of the Baltic states. I'd rather have NATO-member Russian tank divisions positioned to attack China's naked rear, backed by Russian ICBMs, helping us. I would argue the US hasn't fought an industrial power out of its weight class.....ever. When we eventually fight the CCP, we're going against a nation that is embarrassing us with its shipbuilding capacity, has 4x the manpower to draw on, and will be operating with shorter logistical lines. We need Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Philippines...all of them to help. We need the Russians to do this again: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria ), while the US Pacific Fleet and JMSDF sink the PLAN, with India/Vietnam/Korea providing basing for the US Air Force.

How does Estonia help us topple the only other Great Power on the planet? The only other serious challenger to US hegemony?

[kaba0]

First of all, that’s a very US-centric view. Second of all, as seen from this ongoing war, Russia is no longer a super-power, hell, it doesn’t even have a considerably good military to begin with.

But in all seriousness, if it were to come to a US-CCP war, everyone would equivalently loose no matter what.

[Mirioron]

This is how you get more nukes in the world. If NATO wouldn't help protect the Baltics, Poland etc then it's pretty clear their only option for long-term sovereignty would be banding together to create their own nuclear deterrence. No amount of training would stop a country like Russia (or the US) from trying their luck at some point.

Russia attacking its neighbors goes back centuries. And for that matter, so does western Europe and the US. If there's no formal alliance, then the western powers would be a threat too.

[CapricornNoble]

You make some very good points. But creating and maintaining a credible and safe nuclear deterrent is VERY expensive. I think the trick to convincing people they don't need it is to not go around invading other countries in the first place. Mexico doesn't have nukes despite the US easily having a half-dozen reasons it could trump up for "regime change". South Africa gave up their nuke program (I REALLY need to study this one, it's on my To-Do List). Right now we are witnessing Ukraine shatter the Russian military, a pretty good endorsement of conventional deterrence against invasion at least for everyone else who is concerned.