NATO Expansion Fallacy

The argument posited by Russia is that they don't want a NATO country on their border and an agreement has been breached. They already have NATO countries on their border, just as NATO already has Russia on its border.

The only reason Russia wants a buffer state is due to its own failure to democratise, which has resulted in it seeing any democracy on its borders as a threat to its own power.

Contrary to popular belief and Russian insistence, NATO made no promise to Russia not to expand NATO membership. Any promises given were solely limited to the reunification of Germany under the 1990 Two Plus Four Treaty in respect of restrictions on NATO troops and nuclear weapons in the former GDR which, following reunification, became part of Germany and therefore NATO. Russia, however, has perpetuated the revisionist myth that promises were given about no further expansion of NATO as a whole.

In 1990, the USSR signed the Charter of Paris with the commitment to ‘fully recognize the freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements’. The NATO–Russia Founding Act, signed in 1997, similarly pledged respect for the ‘inherent right’ of all states ‘to choose the means to ensure their own security’.

It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993 and it's fall into the hands of the ultra-nationalists that the former Soviet satellite states sought, quite understandably, security from NATO. It was driven not by America and NATO, but the Baltic states who felt themselves vulnerable to an increasingly anti-democratic Russia.

A good primer on the facts can be read here, although it's a constant source of irritation for some and especially Putin. Gorbachev himself is on record in an interview in October 2014 with the Russian newspaper, Komersand, that NATO expansion, except in relation to the former GDR, was not mentioned in any discussions.

One things is certain - more countries will want to join NATO to prevent Putin's aggression, if NATO will have them, which is a moot point. Many mistakenly accuse him of trying to recreate the USSR, but his real aim, according to historians, is the recreation of imperialist, Tzarist Russia.