And if that person has more of an interest in not being invaded by Russia than cooperating with Russia? Deserved or not, that's the reality in a lot of the former Soviet states.
Any person who has an interest in not being invaded by Russia wouldn't have pursued the Western policy of the last 25 years.
Frankly, I don't think that defensive structures like ABM systems should have been avoided in the first place. They are inherently defensive in nature, and their construction certainly doesn't "upset security in Europe".
On one hand, you say "But that doesn't mean anyone thinks MAD went away with the fall of the USSR", and then with the other you argue that withdrawing against the ABM treaty which is the basis of MAD is completely reasonable.
The goal of NATO is to ensure the defense of its member nations.
Oh, come on. John Matlock, former ambassador to the USSR, had this to say:
So, yes, if I had been asked when I was ambassador of the United States in Moscow in 1991, “Is there an understanding that NATO won’t move to the east?” I would have said, “Yes, there is.” However, it was not a legal commitment, and one could say that once the Soviet Union collapsed, any agreement then maybe didn’t hold, except that when you think about it, if there was no reason to expand NATO when the Soviet Union existed, there was even less reason when the Soviet Union collapsed and you were talking about Russia. And the reason many of us—myself, George Kennan, many of us—argued against NATO expansion in the ’90s was precisely to avoid the sort of situation we have today. It was totally predictable. If we start expanding NATO, as we get closer to the Russian border, they are going to consider this a hostile act. And at some point, they will draw a line, and they will do anything within their power to keep it from going any further. That’s what we’re seeing today.
This is nuts. The American Civil War was a civil war because it split a country - Ukraine and Russia are two different countries. That they share similar ethnic compositions is immaterial.
Ukraine has been a country for only 25 years. It's not a similar ethnic composition- it's the fact that you will not find anybody in Ukraine without family in Russia.
The reason they have no bases in Canada or Mexico is primarily because they are not allied with Canada or Mexico. Unlike Russia, America has very good relations with its neighbors - this is the key to lasting security, not the seizure of land.
Unlike Russia
What about relations with Belarus, Kazakhstan, and so on? I mean, this is kind of delusional. America has invaded or armed rebellions in half of South America, and tried to invade and embargoed the tiny island of Cuba for half a century. But Russia is the aggressor in the world!
Independent countries have the right to join military alliances, including NATO. What would you have NATO do instead? Leave them out in the cold?
If Russian leadership knew how the next 10 years would play out, they would have never relinquished control of the republics at any cost.