“Still waiting for the quiz answer of when NATO first bordered Russia. ;-) I could ask a different way: which was the first NATO nation to border Russia?”
Your attempt to obfuscate the matter is noted. You are avoiding the unpleasant role of American warmongers in the eastward expansion of NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union … a blatant breach of the agreement to hold the boundary of NATO where it was as of 1991. That would have formed a buffer between NATO and Russia, as Gorbachev sought. NATO could have denied former Warsaw Pact countries membership in NATO, but pressure from the US to expand the organization as a means of cornering and harassing Russia won out, and NATO added former Warsaw Pact member states and other countries over time, beginning with Poland and Hungary. The expansion of NATO was a blatant American-inspired effort to stir up trouble in Eastern Europe as a means of provoking war with Russia … a thoroughly hare-brained scheme with no justifiable basis.
“I’m old, and I’ve seen a lot of changes in the world, but few have surprised me so much as the modern GOP’s embrace of Russian imperialism and of Putin’s tyranny.”
I have a few decades in my past. Few things surprise me as much as the transmogrification of the Democrat Party from one that opposed war and intrusive government, opposed intervention in the affairs of other countries, advocated for free speech at home and abroad, etc … into a Party of warmongers obsessed with imposing the will of the US government on other countries, hellbent on weaponizing the agencies of American government against eAmerican citizens, obsessed with shutting down free speech, and aggressively intent on " anything to hold on to power.
Orwell described the future under such a party in his novel “Nineteen Eight-Four”: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
“Normal people who lean moderately left are rightfully concerned that cadaver Joe doesn’t have the mental acuity for the job.”
Biden has been a loose cannon all of his fifty-plus years in politics. Now that he has control of the nuclear football, he’s an existential threat to everyone.
“Of course, Putin believes those borders should extend far deeper into Europe than they actually do.”
Your are regurgitating American propaganda. It was the US and the European leadership of NATO that pushed the borders of NATO eastward, toward Russia. And was the US and the European leadership of NATO that tried to make Ukraine a member of NATO. Russia finally struck back when the US staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014. Now … where in all of this did Russia attempt to push its borders into Europe?
“Still waiting for the quiz answer of when NATO first bordered Russia. ;-) I could ask a different way: which was the first NATO nation to border Russia?”
Your attempt to obfuscate the matter is noted. You are avoiding the unpleasant role of American warmongers in the eastward expansion of NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union … a blatant breach of the agreement to hold the boundary of NATO where it was as of 1991. That would have formed a buffer between NATO and Russia, as Gorbachev sought. NATO could have denied former Warsaw Pact countries membership in NATO, but pressure from the US to expand the organization as a means of cornering and harassing Russia won out, and NATO added former Warsaw Pact member states and other countries over time, beginning with Poland and Hungary. The expansion of NATO was a blatant American-inspired effort to stir up trouble in Eastern Europe as a means of provoking war with Russia … a thoroughly hare-brained scheme with no justifiable basis.