Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I don't think that's true, especially with modern technology. The Cuba missile crisis was the response to us putting nuclear missiles in countries near the USSR, so they in turn put some in Cuba. The "threat" wasn't in invasion by Cuba, it was Cuba having the ability to strike American cities. Ukraine, to my knowledge, does not have that kind of technology, but I have a hard time with the notion that Russia wouldn't be concerned with Ukraine being an unfriendly neighbor that is trying to up their military technology and having the assistance of several other countries.

We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and threw out their governments on a similar (if much less realistic) basis, in that Iraq supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and Afghanistan was harboring people we wanted to kill or capture.

this is hilariously one-sided thinking. NATO = the good guys. Just defensive, eh. Why? Because we say so? Iraq and Afghanistan blunders- just defensive, right? Bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia, just defensive, right? Syria, Libya, just defensive right? NATO members collaborated with their leader- the US in all of these misadventures. Call it whatever you want- but it's a MILITARY ALLIANCE. Lead by what is by far the most powerful military and country on planet earth. NATO by the way, was created before The Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was created 6 or 7 years after NATO and was created as a response to NATO and to the remilitarization of West Germany. I'm sure they were thinking: a re-armed Germany- the country that had literally just killed tens of millions of people and wrecked the entire world twice from 1914 to 1945 - what could possibly go wrong?

NATO is a toy of the worlds greatest superpower, the United States- used to protect energy supply chains and shipping lanes and to maintain hegemony over Europe. That's basically what it is in a nutshell. Russia has valid reason not to trust and to be weary of the US. Only a nation of absolute fools would trust the United States. Damn near every single US player from the Cold War era condemned, railed, and warned against Clinton and Bush II's expansion of NATO. Almost everyone.

Ukraine in NATO is viewed as unacceptable for Russia. It would devastate their defensive lines- and make it impossible for them to halt any kind of land invasion. MAD would be a thing for sure that you could argue would bring peace of mind against invasion- if the ABM Treaty wasn't ripped to shreds in 2002- by.....the United States. IF serious breakthroughs were made by ABM tech- and US had high capability to destroy Russian nukes- they gain first strike capability and MAD is a thing of the past. The possibility that this might happen- you can bet Russian military planners have thought about it.

This video right here from about 4 min to 9 min mark....does a great job explaining the importance Ukraine to them in terms of geography to push back any potential land invasion- and why they don't really care too much about the Baltics as a threat...because they could easily surround and cut the Baltics off in the event of invasion...a Ukraine in NATO- they'd be wide open to invasion with no way to stop it.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

so Russia could strengthen its defense by taking over Ukraine

so what gives them the right just because its useful to them

during the history of NATO there has never been an action by them of invading or even attacking another nation 

go figure, a bunch of knuckleheads on a college football fan board, solving all the worlds problems.  Who knew?

yeah, so this just is not factually true.

And I'm sure they're far more worried about US than NATO. NATO is literally a big nothing without the US.