Show me a recent Western intervention that threatens Russia's legitimate security interests. Syria? Perhaps. Aside from that your assertion is unsupported.
That being said....
If you were Russian and you'd spent the last century watching the West undercut you and try and control you at every step (for valid reasons in a lot of cases), you'd be threatened, too.
They went from being a superpower to having 100 million more people than California with the same GDP, while watching their own neighboring states get courted by the West.
Russia isn't justified in what they've done, but put yourself in their shoes. Of course it doesn't help that history has been exceedingly cruel to the Russian people, but it's given them a lot of pride and being dictated to by the US has upset that pride.
If the Russians believed that he US genuinely had their best interests in mind, things might be different.
This sounds a lot like apologizing for Germany's feelings in 1930. Except, of course, the Russians had their 1933 in 2010 or so.
They did get shafted! They've also responded to that shafting by becoming a heavily authoritarian military aggressor.
Russia has done some evil things to others and its own people (understatement), but it's not US (good) vs Russia (evil). It's a little here and a little there and if we ever want to reach across the table and have real peace it's by treating them and every other country with respect instead of as a doormat.
Do American policy makers care if the average Russian has a hard life? Not really. But Russians certainly do and they are doing what they perceive to be protecting their own interests, for right and wrong.
Cornered animals fight. We've backed a starving bear into a corner and are surprised when it lashes out.
Their leadership just doesn't/didn't value human lives very much.
How about you put yourself in the shoes of people who's lives were ruined by Russian expansionism?
Oh, and why should we care about their pride at all?
How about you put yourself in the shoes of people who's lives were ruined by Russian expansionism?
And we absolutely should. Why not do both?
Oh, and why should we care about their pride at all?
Understanding motives is very important.
But if other countries, especially smaller ones, want something, then to hell with them!
That's what you're replying to. Several former Warsaw Pact countries joined NATO. The West didn't invade them.
Every empire needs aligned, friendly, or at least, neutral buffer states on their borders - and will violently defend incursions into their buffer zones. Observe the shitshow over Cuba - sixty years of sanctions, terrorism, assassination attempts, an invasion, and a nuclear crisis later, the United States still hasn't forgiven it.
The United States was ready to bathe the entire world in nuclear fire - because a neighbouring country entered into a military alliance with the USSR. Let that sink in... And then consider what expanding NATO into Eastern Europe, US support of Georgia, regime change in Syria looks like from the Russian point of view.
Meanwhile, in the present, 21st century, the US is busy building a missile defense shield in Poland. [1] (While claiming that it is built to defend against, of all places, Iran. [2] Seriously?) It is intended to neuter Russian nuclear capability... Meanwhile, Minutemen ICBMs continue to be able to strike Russia.
I ask again - how would the US react if China, or Russia started building army bases, and anti-ICBM installations in Canada, Mexico, and Cuba? How would the American empire respond to a political incursion into its buffer states?
[0] http://www.ww.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...
Who is under a greater threat of being invaded: Russian by the west or a ex-Soviet Union Baltic state by Russia?