so you're only going for NATO puppets states huh?
Soon
its lobby of weapon manufacturer companies - without boogeyman in face of Russia, they wouldn't be able to sell their products. And they really need this boogeymen to the point where they actually poke Russia, provoking reaction that could then justify increased defensive spending from budgets of countries.
Its basically a scam - people work pay taxes to budget country, but the security services and arms manufacturers collude with each other to enrich each other by manufacturing a threat.
In early 2000 after the fall of USSR there was a chance for total PEACE in Europe, they could have accepted Russian into NATO, but it was rejected by Europe and USA because they needed Russian boogeyman to be outside their block.
Since noone bothered to reply I'll assume the pic was from a Western source, and I want to supplement this >>299067 opinion.
Currently in international relations two theories are the prevailing:
1. the evergreen realist (typical for the Rest, not the West)
2. the liberal (typical in the West)
According to realism, states are occupied by two things: security and power. They raise security so they can raise their power, and they raise their power and use it to raise security. States do this because the international arena is anarchic (= not regulated by a higher power), and riddled with uncertainty (can't really know what the other states doing and why they do what they do). So all realists assume the other states are conspiring against them, therefore have to raise security and power.
Liberals say however that with trade, with doing business internationally wars can be prevented since that would ruin business and noone wants to lose money. They also say that creating international institutions (such as UN) the uncertainty in the international stage can be decreased, and trust can be built.
But the liberal brain has two hemispheres and only one is liberal, the other is realist. And every time they look at a not liberal (such as Saddam, or Putin), their brain processes switch to the realist side, and they will think, those guys surely planning to do some evil deeds, therefore the security and power has to be raised.
Ofc there is a reason why they behave this. If they have a boogeyman (>>299067) it's easy to sell the realist arguments at home to the peasants, so they could stuff the pockets of their military industrial complex buddies (and get some hefty sums from their lobbists).
Agreed, but Russia also gives reasons to their neighbours to join NATO threating with military interventions allegating to protect the pro russian minorities like in georgia, there are countries that dont like westoids in NATO like hungary, but they have no other option like a coalition of post-soviet states to dissuade russia
