• Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I get what you’re saying about perspectives, and I’ll take your question in good faith. Let’s establish some key points:

    NATO is a defensive alliance. NATO’s founding principle is collective defense—Article 5 states that an attack on one member is an attack on all. However, NATO has never preemptively attacked Russia or any other non-member state. The only time Article 5 has ever been invoked was after 9/11.

    If NATO were aggressive, we’d have seen it by now. NATO expanded eastward because former Soviet-controlled states wanted to join. If NATO were truly a threat to Russia’s existence, why hasn’t it attacked Russia in the 30+ years since the USSR collapsed? There have been countless opportunities if that were NATO’s intent. But that’s not what has happened—because NATO isn’t an offensive force.

    Putin’s “perspective” is selective and self-serving. Russia itself has attacked multiple neighboring countries—Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine (multiple times), and intervened in Syria. Meanwhile, NATO has not attacked Russian territory, nor has it forced any nation to join. So when Putin claims NATO is the aggressor, he is projecting—using the idea of a NATO “threat” as an excuse to justify his own expansionist wars.

    Putin doesn’t recognize Ukraine as a real country. He has said outright that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and that Ukraine exists only because of Soviet mistakes. That isn’t about NATO—it’s about his imperial ambitions. If NATO weren’t the excuse, he’d find another one.

    So yes, Russia might perceive NATO as aggressive, but that doesn’t make it true. A defensive alliance accepting new members isn’t aggression. An authoritarian leader launching wars to reclaim “lost” lands is.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      5 hours ago

      NATO is a millitary alliance of Imperialist states formed directly to exert pressure on the USSR, and now retains that hostile history with the current Russian Federation. It was led by Nazis including Adolf Heusinger and has performed hostile, anticommunist terrorist operations such as Operation Gladio in order to combat Communism and exert power to maintain Imperialism.

      Your analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is purely a character analysis of Putin, and not the legitimate material interests of all countries involved. This form of “Great Man Theory” is genuinely a myopic form of geopolitical analysis that rarely gets at the truth behind why events happen, and instead decides to look at history as though it’s the whims of a few individuals and not the billions of regular people.