>> Russia stated that Ukraine joining NATO would start a war. The US began that process knowing Russia's reaction. Russia did what it said it would do.

> This has nothing to do with reality.

> ...

> Russia did not threaten anyone with war over the prospect of NATO membership.

As much as I hate Putin and his regime, we have to admit Russia did indeed said that it views the NATO expansion as an existential threat.

From Putin's 2007 Munich speech [1]:

> It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfill the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all. I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.

The speech obviously did not make a direct threat, this is a political speech after all, but the message was crystal clear for most, take for example the letter [2] Burns (US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008) sent after the Munich's speech to Condoleeza Rice in which Burns warned of serious consequences arising from NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia:

> Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a MAP offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze. . . . It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. (letter to Condoleeza Rice, February 2008)

[1] https://securityconference.org/en/publications/books/selecte... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladimir...

[edit]: formatting

> Burns warned of serious consequences arising from NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia

And then Ukraine accession disappeared from the policy menu. Then Putin annexed Crimea. Pretending Putin invaded Ukraine with any more strategic coherence than Trump going into Iran reveals a reality-defying bias in a source.

This is an intimidation tactic and not a real threat. If the vague threat is enough to prevent something from happening, then it has served its purpose. If not, then the vagueness gives an exit to do nothing.

Pretty much every country that has joined NATO since the end of the Cold War has seen a flood of such threats, Finland and Sweden most recently[1]:

  "Finland's accession to Nato will cause serious damage to bilateral Russian-Finnish relations and the maintaining of stability and security in the Northern European region. Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to neutralise the threats to its national security that arise from this."

Russia has attacked only Georgia and Ukraine, the two countries that did not end up joining NATO. There, the threats achieved their goal and shaped the battlefield in favor of Russia, which was then exploited. Elsewhere, the fake act of "We're soooo concerned with our national security" did not yield the desired results, and Russians moved on.

Burns and many other Western diplomats have been surprisingly ignorant of such games, treat Russians as primitive savages who are incapable of manipulating people (despite it being a deeply ingrained feature of their culture), and take their words at face value, which produces the kind of memos Burns wrote. The 2008 decision to deny Georgia and Ukraine entry into NATO is nowadays widely considered a mistake. The views Burns held and promoted in the memo made the war more likely instead of preventing it.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61420185

NATO doesn't expand eastward. Countries that see Russia as a temu-tier empire seek a defensive partnership.

The cold war is over, Russia lost in everyone's mind except the second rate KGB officer who now runs the country.