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Comment by Aaargh20318 | Hacker News Reader

Aaargh20318

> Even with USSR gone, they were in Russia's sphere of influence, and making those overtures would be provocative.

What is provocative about joining NATO ? It is a purely defensive alliance. They are absolutely no threat to Russia. The only reason to be against anyone joining NATO is if you were planning to invade them. And guess what happened ?

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It's not as much "NATO expanded", as countries, which became "more free" after Gorbachev decided that they'd have a better protection from a repeat of the recent past. It's not a good idea to deny protection to those who asks for it, given the reasons.

Look up the history of the Monroe Doctrine for the US. The US overthrew (or attempted to overthrow) any government in the Western Hemisphere that allied with the USSR. Even now, imagine how the US would react if Mexico declared a military alliance with a US enemy, while sharing thousands of miles of border with the US.

Mexico is a frequent counterexample, but I'm not sure what would happen if, say, USSR would still exist, and would manage to create a union with Southern American and Central American countries. Like, Cuba, then Venezuela, then, imagine, Colombia... I wouldn't think that USA would immediately jump to nukes.

Familiar with the Bay of Pigs?

It’s no more provocative than Mexico joining a Russia-lead defensive alliance.

But Mexico neither needs nor plans to, despite even having wars with the US in the past. This alone might tell you something.

Surprisingly there exist countries whose neighbors do not run into defensive alliances excluding their neighbors at the first opportunity, why is that?

It was an example. The point is having an adversary’s rockets on one’s border makes a country nervous.

Mexico’s real life stance relative to Russia isn’t relevant for the example to hold.

You probably are referring to Cuban missile crisis. They wanted to get USSR missiles purely for defensive purposes and that clearly wasn’t perceived that way.

Installing missiles and joining a defense alliance are two completely independent things. Ukraine can install missiles without joining NATO or join NATO without installing missiles. The two have literally nothing to with each other.

Also, how were the missiles on Cuba defensive ?

Lol except that mexico doesn't want that.

You see, that's what you "both sides do it" people keep missing. Both sides aren't equal. One side tramples their own neightbors, so their neighbors hate them. The other side tramples other people's neighbors so that their enemies are really far away. Russia is a losing nation playing losing strategies, and you Russia lovers are losers too.

OP couldn’t understand why Russia would be provoked by a defensive alliance on its border.

I gave a hypothetical example to illustrate how America would be provoked by a defensive alliance on its border.

Nothing more or less than this and the “you X people” rhetoric doesn’t apply.

No, your hypothetical doesn't apply.

It's like if I said "well but if we could time-travel, then X". But we can't! That hypothetical has no connection to reality. And neither does yours.

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