NATO is not a loaf of rising bread that expands on its own when left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because I voted for successive governments that set it as their top priority, because I believed then and I believe now that tight cooperation with likeminded countries is the best way to deter another Russian invasion (we've had 40+ of them in recorded history).

And this is the universal view in Europe as of 2024. No country in Europe can afford on their own what Ukraine has been through, and this makes military alliances essential for national security. Even Sweden with its 200+ years of neutrality ditched it as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is by now a cautionary tale of naive belief in diplomacy (Helsinki Accords; Budapest memorandum; etc) without a big stick to back it up.

Conspiracy theories about the US turning Europe against Russia are completely redundant. When it comes to national security, no responsible government in parts of Europe closest to Russia can afford to stay out of NATO. If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine?

For a very long time, both Finland and Sweden had a deep belief that skillful diplomacy could prevent a war with Russia, but what do you do when Russia starts blasting that your country doesn't exist?

Yes. My whole position in this thread has been that countries tend to do things for the obvious reason, I'm not sure why people keep expecting me to disagree on points like that. Everyone wants to be in NATO. Even Russia probably wants to join NATO. But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.

???

But that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Ukraine and Georgia desired to join the NATO like everyone else. The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. This lowered the risk for Russia and they immediately invaded Georgia, and a few years later Ukraine, and expanded the invasion in 2022 after they saw the shameful retreat from Afghanistan as a further sign of US' weakness and unwillingness to support their allies.

Not American expansionist urge, but the utterly short-sighted belief in "we must not provoke Russia" is how we got here. Russians are not provoked by strength, but by weakness. Belief in enemy's weakness enables dangerous illusions like "3 days to Kyiv".

This has come only after years of war against Ukraine and refusal by Russia to take any offered exit ramp.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Obama refused to provide lethal aid to Ukraine. After Russia launched the full-scale invasion in 2022, the US infamously offered Zelensky a ride and not ammo. Countries like Germany were openly mocked for providing only 5000 helmets. It took approximately half a year before any considerable aid began to appear in Ukraine. They got their first American tanks (only 31 provided so far) full year and a half into the war.

NATO countries and other allies have consistently dragged their feet and done too little too late. This allowed Russia to recover from the initial shock, and their armed forces are larger than at the start of the war. This year, they are forming two new armies that are larger than the ground forces of UK, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and a number of other countries COMBINED.

Instead of a conspiratorial ruse, European governments have finally recognized that Russia is a rapidly growing threat to entire Europe, and that's why they started to pour a lot of resources into Ukraine starting around fall 2023, and into rebuilding their own militaries. Russians are wiping one Ukrainian town after another from the earth with no indication of stopping anytime soon. At worst, we can expect a second front launched from Belarus against Poland and Lithuania.

> unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine

It is very obvious that there were no serious plans for such turn of events. Many NATO countries, including mine, were caught by surprise and have had to provided military aid to Ukraine at the expense of own security from readiness stocks that cannot be replenished for many years to come, but might be needed to fulfill NATO obligations, should Russia broaden the war.

Not only were NATO countries unprepared, but several key countries didn't even believe such development could be possible at all. The chief of French military intelligence was infamously fired over inadequate assessments related to Russian invasion of Ukraine.

> The hopes of Ukraine were never dashed.

Yes they were. Even today, nobody is willing to give any firm commitments. At the last NATO summit, Biden refused to support NATO invitation for Ukraine and instead lobbied for a vague "Ukraine will become a member of NATO" statement without any specified date, to great frustration of Ukrainians.

The story you are trying to spin is the polar opposite of observable reality.