Every country that joined NATO wanted to join. They were not forced too.
No, the Baltics came into NATO for protection
Of course people are going to run under a for-sale nuclear umbrella if somebody's offering. It being left open after the reason for that deal being made
died was profoundly retarded, because it invited the
absolute worst-case scenario of direct borders with a nuclear-armed country with no realistic future if it doesn't take
something from
somebody to work with. Pretending that the Russian Federation is
remotely comparable to the Soviet Union that inspired the creation of NATO is creating problems with no need to exist.
Russia has literally the biggest corner in the world.
That's mostly frozen wasteland and has fuck-all way to use it without at least two middle men. By this logic, Canada should be a serious contender of some description, but it's just America's egotistical hat busy selling itself to China. Very importantly, they don't have the people to work it
already. A lot of the talk of the timing I've seen is that Russia is
already closing in on the last possible chance to break out of the soft power straightjacket.
Russia should stop pushing the EU into a corner then
Difference being that the EU has extremely plentiful trade access due to year-round ports and much less severe demographic issues because it doesn't have the double-whammy of a massive manpower crunch from WW2 depopulation combined with negligible replacement skilled labor because the education system collapsed
just in time for the undersized generation to also have extremely limited ability to replace the elderly expertise.
These issues are not hard to predict. Russia's time-bomb was well set right when the USSR fell. You do not directly confront and corner the starving rabid animal, you get out a long stick to keep it away from
you. But no, the Almighty Status Quo demands nobody to make use of their military spending no matter
how genuine an existential threat of
rotting away there is, and any hint of such is to be gone after with an incredibly long list of shady manipulations and hypocritical impoverishment.
This is not to say that Russia is in the right. This is to say that Ukraine shouldn't be a "NATO problem", because NATO was for defending against the USSR, and as has been
very well demonstrated recently the Russian Federation is already a rump state in comparison. The nuclear umbrella should be reserved for
essential allies, not mild Number Go Up scab worker suppliers or randos with the misfortune of bordering a kleptocracy, because any use of it is
by definition an existential threat.