> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries,

Which was horrendously destructive, and the two World Wars fought using more modern weaponry were particularly awful. In fact, avoiding similar wars in Europe was part of the original justification for creating the EU, Europe has benefited tremenously from the almost a century of near-peace it's experienced, and this makes Russia's recent actions basically an existential threat to the rest of Europe.

If the goal was to avoid war in Europe, then keeping a buffer of neutral countries between Russia and the EU/NATO would have been the logical course of action, when failing to integrate Russia in the European family.

It seems to me that the EU and US didn’t know when to stop and only looked at the potential economical and respectively geopolitical gains, while not giving enough weight to the risk of conflict when it was known what Russia’s red lines were.

This was a policy blunder. Looking at it from a moral or international law perspective is a dead end when the primary driver of the chain of events leading to today was geopolitics.

You are ignoring the will of the people in a buffer state. In the EU they see prospering liberal democracies and on the other side it's permanent authoritarian kleptocracy, which by the way still sees them as part of a lost empire. Of course they are going to want a path to the EU.

You seem to be assuming that countries may decide on their own freely who they associate with. This is the case in international law, but not in reality, as can be seen in many examples concerning Russia or the US or China.

Realpolitik vs ideal-oriented policy. It wasn’t the buffer states driving the decision, it was the US and NATO. They had to choose between buffer states and expanding NATO. The developments in Ukraine were predictable and likely avoidable had they chosen differently - see the fate of Belarus or Georgia or Ukraine before 2004 and before 2014.

And that's why countries have to consider all of their neighbors when deciding on their foreign policy. There was a lot of bad blood for example against Germany, but since we have a very good economic partnership with them, there is no reason for being overly prepared for war with them. They haven't done anything to consider them hostile.

Russia has consistently been a bad neighbor that keeps on threatening or playing weird tricks against other countries. They have invaded multiple neighbors in the last 100 years, where the rest of Europe has become more peaceful.

There is a clear danger to peace in Europe, and that's why countries want to join NATO.

Why do you think that letting Eastern European countries join NATO is misguided? So far, it has been the number one reason that Russia hasn't invaded any other countries in the region.

Now you’ve scaled back from hundreds of years to a just as arbitrary 100 years.

I assume you’ve led with Germany to address the very obvious WW2, when Germany turned the entire continent into a bloodbath. Ok, let’s skip that one :-)

There were the Cod Wars, which were mostly boat ramming affairs, if it weren’t for the fact that Iceland threatened to leave NATO, expel US forces and broke diplomatic relations with the UK at some point.

There was the Turkish Cypriot conflict, which continues to smolder until the present day.

Quite a few civil wars and uprisings.

Then the big Yugoslav war, where a defensive alliance oddly decided to go on the offensive.

The next big war was the current one in Ukraine.

Rather quiet given Europe’s bloody past. But if we look outside Europe, we see that the warfare just moved to other places. Falklands, Iraq twice, Syria, Libya. Not to mention the French and British colonial empires.

Core NATO are no slouches at invading and making war. So what’s the point in trying to make Russia seem irredeemable? We measure with very different standards what we do vs. what they do. Makes it easier to justify militarization, spending enormous amounts on weapons, reducing civil liberties, etc if you have an evil enemy.

Edit: forgot to answer your question about expansion. Because the likely outcome of not expanding would have been Belarus, Georgia or Ukraine in the 00’s, not invasions and war. This is not some far-fetched theory, Russian and ex-USSR leaders were repeatedly advocating for it and US and German/French politicians were obviously aware of it and in agreement. Post Bush the 1st the US changed its policy and went on a NATO expansion quest.

> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries

We don't need to go into that long history. Most of these CEE countries have been invaded by Russia in the last 100 years.

> It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign policy experts were warning against it.

It actually worked out well. Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized.

"Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized."

Why?

Because Russia has a recent and current track record of behaving this way.

You too are trying to justify NATO expansion by Russian reaction to it.

Not necessarily. Most of the new members have been invaded by Russia in the past 100 years.

And Russia has been invaded by most of the European countries in the same time period. Starting from the Intervention and Poland's invasion to the invasion by Germany and its allies.

I’m puzzled by this statement. Russia has been invaded by Germany several times. Has it been invaded by France, Spain, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, or The UK in the past 100 years? As a parochial American, what have I missed?

Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War

Czechoslovaks, United Kingdom, France, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Italy, Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

Germany, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

The intervention was a messy affair, but can hardly be called an invasion. Czechoslovak legion got to Russia to fight on its side and when Bolsheviks took over, mostly just tried to return home. The goals of other countries interventions in this chaos were diverse, but again, mostly not directed against Russia, some e.g. tried to prevent Germany from taking more Russian territory.

"but can hardly be called an invasion"

It was an invasion in support of one of the sides in Russian civil war. Russia made peace with Germany 1917 [0], the intervention started in 1918.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_between_Russia_and_t...

You're deflecting. The point is that CEE countries had a valid reason to fear Russian imperialism and acted accordingly.

You're deflecting.

I remind you that I asked 'Why?' in response to your bold statement "Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized."

And I responded to you that Russia has both long and recent history of imperialism in this region.

Just like almost anyone else which makes it a deflection and not an answer.

No, the countries in question have been recently threatened only by Russia.

The only other recent aggressor was by that point completely pacified Germany.

Again, you are justifying an action by the reaction to it.

No, these aggressions happened in the recent history (< 100 years) before NATO accessions. Once in NATO, these countries were off limits (= main lure of the membership).

You are going in circles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32829679

You're going in circles. We're not discussing why Russia started CSTO, but why CEE nations felt the need to enter NATO. The fact that Russia was also invaded in its history bears no relevancy in this matter.

And here we go again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835337