Can you elaborate how NATO is a threat to itself and everyone else?
It would appear Putin is the greatest threat to Russia and everyone else. He is the one ignoring Russia's own territorial treaties. He is the aggressor invading sovereign states. NATO alliances are defense pacts that are entered into voluntarily by all parties.
As for whose fault is what — honestly, would you care, if either Russia launches nukes or NATO does so preemptively, and then the other side inevitably retaliates, and our world dies in flames — would you really care whose fault it would have been? Would it really matter to you?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-its-troops-...
Remember NATO is a defense alliance which must be invited in. And afterward doesn't grant the new inductee any power to threaten other sovereign states.
Said another way, does Putin having nukes constitute a blank check to annex neighbors?
Yes. In this case, both parties consent to threatening each other with their nuclear arsenals. They consent to gradually raising the stakes in this poker game, and eventually calling each other's bluff. It may very well turn out that one of the two is bluffing. Or it may not. I really don't care all that much to find out which.
> If someone is accosted we don't say they--as a victim--share half the fault.
> ... trespassing and destruction justified?
> ... a blank check to annex neighbors?
We are speaking different languages here. You are talking the language of ethics and apportioning the blame. I am talking the language of survival, which I think the article in the title post talks as well.
If - following your metaphor — you live next door to a neighbor who has hired a bodyguard, and in the moment of intrusion the bodyguard and the intruder start firing at each other from a rocket launcher, explode a cistern full of gas, and as a result the intruder dies, the bodyguard dies, your neighbor dies, and you die — would you particularly care in those last terrifying moments whether it was the intruder's fault, the bodyguard's fault, or your neighbor's fault? I know I wouldn't.
> Said another way, does Putin having nukes constitute a blank check to annex neighbors?
Both no and yes, depending on which way you turn the question. It doesn't give him the right to do so, but it sure gives him the means.
This is absurd. NATO is a defensive pact voluntarily entered into. Russia's neighbors want in not because of Western provocations but because of Putin.
> If - following your metaphor — you live next door to a neighbor who has hired a bodyguard, and in the moment of intrusion...
Framed this way I would be the intruder, the one deciding to escalate an already dangerous situation. And therefore I would be the foolish one, putting everyone's lives at risk for my own selfish goals.
> would you particularly care in those last terrifying moments whether it was the intruder's fault, ...
It's kind of irrelevant once the moment is reached. The world isn't there yet. And it's Putin with his foot on the gas accelerating toward destruction.
> It doesn't give him the right to do so, but it sure gives him the means.
Then every nation around Russia must have nukes or an alliance with a nuclear power. Putin is the one pushing them into doing so, and he's proven that any treaty with Russia is worthless. So there's no point trying to ally with them.
I fail to comprehend why you would say so.
The parent's (D_Alex's) thesis, if I may presume so much as to formulate it, is that (1) NATO is a threat because it is "expanding eastward", i.e. admitting countries that are more likely to have a military confrontation with Russia; in which case NATO will be obliged to come to their aid, in which case we are all dead. This is similar to how WW1 and WW2 started, only people didn't have the capacity to destroy all human life on Earth then, as they seem to have now.
Your thesis is that (2) Putin/Russia is a threat because it has nuclear weapons, which it can use, in which case we are all dead.
I am not disputing thesis 2; but it does not, in any way, undermine the validity of thesis 1. Both thesis 2 and thesis 1 may be true at the same time; and it is thesis 1 that I was responding to in the subthread started by D_Alex.