“Acquiring” in that sentence is doing a lot of work for “forcibly invading a NATO ally and triggering article 5”.
The broad advantage of having a "felt of society" —mutually overlapping circles— as opposed to a "fabric of society", is that the latter is much easier to tear.
(It's somewhat :lolsob: to note that Thucydides already distinguished between "stated reasons" and "real reasons" behind a conflict; remember "Remember the Maine!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casus_belli#:~:text=Proschema,... )
EDIT: looks like there may not even be a need to be part of an existing mutual defence alliance; sending troops to take part in Operation Arctic Endurance might suffice for an Art 51 response to invasion?
https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/97801992316...
3(a) and 3(d) refer to: https://iilj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/General-Assembly...
(b) I'm more optimistic. Indeed, on the scale of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510437 I'm currently on "practise speaking Cantonese".
Why? Because even if Oceania, Rasia, and Eastasia want to play 1984 sphere of influence games, we can probably position ourselves neutrally, to trade freely with all of them — and whenever one has designs on us, then the other two would naturally be forced to counter.