That's true sometimes, but sometimes people just want to take what their neighbors have. Russia's government faced no risk of Ukraine attacking, or NATO for that matter. They just wanted Ukraine.
People noticed what changed during the pandemic and after and suddenly everyone is demanding the same type of lives and opportunities and freedoms that the free people of the West have, especially in the United States... so some places became less stable than others and needed to drum up nationalistic fervor to feign justification for a war in order to try to stymy the changing tides at home. It's like when Boris Yeltsin visited a supermarket in the USA and couldn't believe what he was experiencing here versus what he expected to experience based on what he was primed to believe, versus what he experienced in his own home...that story alone when he went back contributed a lot to the eventual downfall of the USSR when people learned the truth. I think what's happening right now except at a much larger and unavoidable scale because of smartphones and social media and more easy access to the open international web where everyone can see how the world works.
Why not? Putin has clearly expressed a desire to restore Russian empire, and is doing it.
> everyone is demanding the same type of lives and opportunities and freedoms that the free people of the West have, especially in the United States...so some places became less stable than others and needed to drum up nationalistic fervor
That's happening all over the world: Russia, US, UK, India, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Israel, China, etc etc etc. It doesn't seem tied to a desire for US lifestyle.
> the Internet and Democracy and the American Constitution have succeeded
Have the latter two been under more threat in decades? And under threat arguably from the first one?
Usually it takes quite a few years of hand-wringing from the NATO side to even agree to consider letting them in.
NATO, as I pointed out, was trying to make Russia a trade partner even after they invaded Georgia and Ukraine, and to this day most countries can hardly fund their militaries (even though many individually have economies larger than Russia's and could fund larger militaries by themselves). NATO didn't conduct exercises, was very careful about putting forces near Russia's border - even on NATO territor, had no facilities in Ukraine (which has never been a member), and certainly didn't move nuclear weapons anywhere near Russia.
For the record, the US had put nukes in Turkey before the USSR put them in Cuba. The crisis was resolved by removing them from both, but only the withdrawal from Cuba was publicized.
Of course, the other stuff you said was accurate. This isn't (…or wasn't) the Cold War, nor was Russia's oppression of Eastern Europe okay during the Cold War either.
Good point.
Russia is the one pointing the gun is this scenario, but they sure do love to pretend otherwise.