It is understandable that citizens in former Warsaw Pact memberstates wanted to slip under the protective umbrella of NATO, however: non-members do not have an inherent claim for getting under the protective umbreella of NATO. They can ask, but NATO emembers have any right one could imagine to say not only Yes, but also to say No.
We will never know if Putin would nto have gone mad if those events would not have happened, I perosnally saw the Eastern expansion of NATO as a provokation, a fault and a breaking of promises, and it is noteworthy that Putin completely chnaged his stance towards the West after it has happened, immediately, as if you were flipping a switch. However in recent weeks I got some doubts on it, and maybe it would not have made a difference, the perceptions of the West as somethign to be hated and that is in decline and degeneration probably would have stayed the same, at least for Putin. We will never know for sure if it would have made a difference not to expand. Possible that then Russia would have sought to expand its own influence there again, like it lured Belarus and two, three other ex-Sovjet provinces back into its orbit. And if that would have happened , we maybe would ask then: wouldnt it have been better if we gave those states NATO membership...
But all that is academical now. We need to deal with the present, because that is the only reality we have got.
I posted an interview with Richard Ned Lebow some days ago, why wars are being fought, and the author , a world-famous war historian, argued that we overestimate the relevance of rational decisions based on egoist motives for going to war, he showed in his work that since 1648 the overwhelming majority of wars were launched instead more by hurt sentiments of people, or individual leaders offended sentiments, and national feelings of unity. He also showed that the vast majority of wars of aggression - got lost by the aggressor. That is counter-intuitive and against what mainstrema thinking believes it knows about the origins of war. But it holds plenty of empirical evidence. We see this pscho-dynamic in football fans who feel with their club. If it looses, they fell all bad, if it wins, they all feel triumphant. Citizens of nations tend to tick like this, too. Inm the end, its "primtive" tribal psychology. Primtive maybe, but nevertheless: real. Its foolish to ignore it.
https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...hard+New+Lebow
Other authors before have shown that oroiginally wars were hoighly ritualized events with strict rules and hardly aiming at completely annihilationb of the enemy, in certainb prnmtive societies until today wars are more about posing and simple acts of showing courage instead of conquest, destruction and mass killing. This changed with the industrialization of warfare, and the forming of nations. From "sports" to"gladiator games" to "wars" in modern understanding, so to speak.
Very interesting stuff.
John Keegan: A istory of Warfare, 1993
Martin van Creveld: The Culture of War, 1988
Richard Ned Lebow: Why Nations Fight, 2010 - This one I am currently reading.