I wonder what it says about a country's intentions if they feel threatened enough to kill tens of thousands of innocent people over them shifting towards joining a defensive alliance.
Offensive alliance.
Libya. Serbia. Afghanistan - all offensive operations.
Libya was in order to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which Russia or China could have vetoed had they wished.
Yugoslavia (Serbia) stands.
Libya was supposed to be a UN sanctioned humanitarian op. It got silently upgraded to regime change, which is why Putin publicly expressed regret at not vetoing it.
Libya was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from Libya.
Serbia was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from... well, not to put too fine a point on it but... Russia's closest ally in Europe.
It is not a purely defensive alliance in any sense of the word except an Orwellian one. All of its military operations have been exclusively offensive in nature.
I almost spit out my coffee I laughed so hard.
That's how the alliance markets itself, but that's not how everyone in the world, especially their potential adversaries, perceives it. And its potential adversaries have been saying so, publicly, for decades.
As I'm sure you understand, all military alliances, even if they start out defensive in nature, can easily become offensive in nature.
> if they feel threatened enough
Exactly, they felt threatened, because they did not and do not perceive NATO as a defensive alliance.
I highly recommend watching the videos I linked in my earlier comment.
Everyone else sees very clearly that an alliance which only invokes when attacked and requires the resolution of territorial disputes prior to gaining membership is not going to just invade them first.
Half of the members were literally dependent on Russia for their energy needs, many of them thinking that the US was the warmongerer for being constantly paranoid about Russia's intentions, with defense budgets trending downwards and the former American president having openly questioned the need for NATO. There is no reasonable way to argue that they were at all going to be attacking Russia as an alliance in that state.
The cynic in me sometimes thinks that part of it, and the American response as well, is perhaps as much that it's a European country being bullied and not somewhere far away (read: brown), but that it's happening at all is any port in the storm.
I disagree that it was due to racism though (in the sense that they're explicitly thinking that "brown people's lives are less valuable"), it's simply that Europe naturally cares more about problems closer to home and the US has the context of its relationship with Russia.
On top of that, both of them have a lot of historical "trauma" from the part of WW2 which was fought by big powers in Europe. I think there would be a similar reaction from Japan, South Korea, and America in response to an invasion of Taiwan by China due to their own history on that front.
So it's not entirely unreasonable for a Russian to look at the NATO as potentially acting like the Warsaw Pact did, although, as you note, the fact that much of NATO doesn't share the same foreign policy as the US (indeed, often criticizes the US's foreign policy aims!) should disabuse them of that notion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...
Ukraine was no threat to Russia. By invading, Russia just proved to everyone else in the world that Russia is the threat.
Which interestingly leads to even more "Russophobia" because apparently having enough Russian speakers in your area is justification enough for Russia to come in and invade.
It's all ridiculous and shameful behavior on Russia's part. I feel bad for all those having to live under their current regime.
Not since 1990, at least. Cold War era defensive structures were dismantled when Warsaw Pact dissolved and Russia never established any comparable defensive structures on its own borders.
In terms of military doctrine, composition and placement of armed forces, preparations of border defenses, early warning systems etc, Russia has not prepared for invasion in any way. Why, if they perceive this as a threat like you say? With virtually all of Russia's fighting force in Ukraine, the road to Russia is wide open. There isn't even a wire fence on Russian side of border with NATO countries Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia! Where do you see any signs of belief in threat from NATO to Russia?
Countries that border Russia, in contrast, have made extensive preparations to fight off another Russian invasion.
Countries in an existing defensive alliance are likely using similar gear, have similar doctrine, have similar values, and have alignment strategic interests.
The defensive alliance exists as an outcome of these alignments, as does the cooperation on the external war. The alliance doesn't cause the external war.
Australia is not part of NATO, yet it's followed America into basically every war it's had in the last 60 years because of these preexisting alignments, not because of NATO.