The ‘blame NATO’ narrative for the Ukraine war gets things exactly backwards. Expanding the alliance did not provoke Putin into becoming more aggressive than he would otherwise have been. StarEditorial
has led to the exact opposite of what he was seeking, look no further than Finland and Sweden.
The fact that Sweden and Finland would even entertain joining NATO is remarkable in itself. It also gives the lie to a pernicious narrative that took hold on both the right and the left when Putin invaded on Feb. 24: that this is essentially the fault of the West. Right-leaning foreign policy “realists” endorse this view on the grounds that it’s just the way the world works. Small countries get shoved around by big ones. Left-leaning critics like it because they’ve always been suspicious of NATO and see the manipulative hand of Washington driving all events.the idea that the West promised Russia early on that NATO would not expand has been thoroughly debunked.
Indeed, in 2014 Putin annexed Crimea and effectively invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine not because of any imaginary NATO threat, but because it fits his belief that Ukraine is a fake country that should never have been allowed to escape the domination of Russia.
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