[AnimalMuppet]

> NATO expanding eastwards is scary and destabilizing to everyone in the world.

I call BS on that one. Just for an extreme example, take Uruguay. How is NATO expansion eastward scary or destabilizing for them?

Or take Estonia. Is NATO expansion destabilizing for them? Or is it stabilizing? I claim it is the latter; it keeps Russia from coming back.

Was it destabilizing for Ukraine? Insufficient data. If NATO had never gone past united Germany, would Russia have invaded Ukraine? Maybe. Would it have been this bloody? Maybe not. It might have been like the Russian interventions is Belarus and Kazakhstan. Is it better, or worse to be under their heel for the next N decades, but initially have fewer dead bodies?

[vkou]

> How is NATO expansion eastward scary or destabilizing for them?

It's scary and destabilizing in the sense that Uruguay doesn't really give a rat's ass about where the borders between east and west are drawn in Europe, but would really, really, really prefer that NATO and Russia don't get into a shooting war.

Same thing with threats to the MAD balance of power, like anti-missile defenses. Anyone standing on the sidelines doesn't really care about where the borders are, they just don't want one side to scare the other to the point of nuclear war.