I understand what you are saying about initial moves, but they do exist. In this case, the situation was reset when the Soviet Union collapsed. They basically conceded the majority of the world to be under a US sphere of influence. In return, Russia wanted, actually it was non-negotiable, to retain a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (see the link below for a good summary of how they are threatened geographically). There are rumors the US/NATO, but it's actually the US, promised not to bring NATO to Russia's borders.* Whether they did or not, it is blatantly obvious to any US/NATO intelligence agency that pulling certain Eastern European countries into NATO and Europe (Baltics and Ukraine) would directly threaten Russia.Scrubby wrote:There is seldom an "initial move" in history, and certainly not in this case. Russia have been suppressing democracy in Ukraine for ages.Chad wrote:No, we don't. The current situation in the Ukraine is a prime example. We started the current mess in Ukraine. Russia is just responding to our initial move.
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopo ... t-struggle
If Russia or China did this with Mexico we would have gone further than Russia has gone with the loss of the Baltics and the beginning of the loss of Ukraine. Hell, we almost started a nuclear war over Cuba and we actually respected Russia's military power then.
*This has been denied by Gorbachev and NATO. Of course, this type of promise is rarely done directly. This was probably more of an implicit promise.