[jcranmer]

> 2. NATO is a defensive only alliance, and can't be invoked for an invasion of Russia. If their concern is the ability of the US to store missiles and other military gear on its border, too late - the Baltics are already members. It would be an odd choice to invade purely based on the likely future expansion of an alliance that is designed to prevent you from invading its members.

It's worth noting that the Soviet equivalent to NATO was the Warsaw Pact, whose largest military operation was invading a member because they wanted to leave. While ostensibly a collective defensive alliance, like NATO, the Soviets treated it as a tool of binding its sphere of influence together, and it would not surprise me if the current Russian leadership sees NATO the same way, a tool by which the US government coerces its sphere of influence to do its bidding. (Needless to say, this is not an accurate view of NATO, but I suspect it is the view that Russia has of it.)

[dragonwriter]

> It's worth noting that the Soviet equivalent to NATO was the Warsaw Pact, whose largest military operation was invading a member because they wanted to leave.

I don’t think that’s quite accurate (it seems, unless I’m mistaken, to conflate elements of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968); the Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956 declared an exit from the Pact but that invasion was pure USSR, not Warsaw Pact. Czechoslovakia in 1968 had reaffirmed its intent to remain in the Pact and faithful to Marxism-Leninism just prior to the Warsaw Pact invasion.

Nevertheless, that the Soviet Union invaded two Warsaw Pact members over insufficient perceived loyalty to the USSR’s direction seems to underline your general point of the difference between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, notwithstanding any quibbles of the precise details of either invasion.