There seems to be this knee jerk reaction to blame the US for everything that happens like the US government is orchestrating everything. NATO expansion is not driven by any US foreign policy. To stay safe in the world today, you need to be in one of two groups: either in the nuclear club, or tucked under the umbrella of someone in the nuclear club. Poland got into NATO by threatening to start their own nuclear program. Their neighbors clamored to get in too. The bulk of Europe sees being under the nuclear umbrellas of the US, UK, and France is the safest they are going to get.
Sweden has been almost as intensely independent as Switzerland for centuries and Finland saw that their best bet for keeping their large neighbor on their side of the border was to play a sort of both sides approach. When Putin tore up the intentional order by trying to occupy Ukraine, both countries decided they needed to be under NATO's nuclear umbrella to remain safe.
I have a friend in Finland who understands a lot about military history and he was quite anxious in the early part of last year. The whole country was worked up. When an army is fully committed in one theater and it isn't going well, the last thing they are likely to do is open another theater, and my friend knew that intellectually, but he was still scared and running towards NATO.
The US isn't driving eastward expansion of NATO, Russia is.
I'm very skeptical of anything related to Glenn Beck, but the poster lost me completely in the first paragraph with the old, wrong chestnut blaming the US for NATO expansion. Anyone championing that is either misinformed or has a political agenda going on.
Among the political agendas are to attack the current administration, but also there is an isolationist movement in the US who completely miss the lessons of history. The US was the dominant economy in the world after WW I by a large margin. The job of the world's next super power was essentially there for the taking. France and the UK snubbed everyone at the peace conference trying to continue the Great Game, but really it was time for the mantle to be passed.
Instead of pressing the issue, Woodrow Wilson (who got very ill at the peace conference and never fully recovered) gave up and went home. The US became very isolationist and tried to pull back from European politics completely. Though it still remained involved in politics on the other side of the world. Sentiment in the US was basically, "screw them". The power vacuum left from the US' lack of involvement allowed nationalist movements to take hold in Italy, Spain, and Germany. US involvement probably couldn't have stopped the internal politics, but may have stopped them from pouring out across their borders on their neighbors.
For a small, weak country, being isolationist isn't such a bad thing. Especially if natural terrain helps keep you neutral like Switzerland or the US. Up until the late 19th century the US was not powerful enough to be a major player on the world stage. It was growing to fill the continent and most of it's economic output was pouring into that effort. Once the frontiers were settled and the industrial revolution took off, the US quickly became the producers of everything. Controlling the middle part of a large continent with the best internal river system in the world, abundant resources, and a growing industrial base, the US was destined to become a dominant power in the 20th century. But for most of the 19th it was not a major player and far enough away from the rest of the world that it could mostly ignore the rest of the world's politics and they could ignore it.
The isolationist movement in the US is an attempt to go back to a state whose time has passed. The US can't be isolationist any more. To try would likely destabilize the entire planet. Now the US could also do better in its working on the world stage. The invasion of Iraq was a massive mistake and Afghanistan was initially the correct move (take out al Qaeda), but it was badly botched and turned into a quagmire. Vietnam was a mistake too. And there are other things the US has done wrong.
I don't have access to the types of intelligence the Biden administration has. There may be some very valid geopolitical reasons that the US has moved as slowly as it has in providing equipment to Ukraine, or it may be the administration is just being too cautious, but the administration is doing the right thing IMO.
The US has talked about righteous causes and people like Glenn Beck were singing the praises of some very flawed "heroes" like the Contras or other nasties who claimed to be fighting the anti-communism fight to get US help when really they were just the other nasties trying to take out the nasties who conveniently aligned themselves with Moscow for the same convenience. I have heard a lot of talk from US political figures about "freedom fighters" over the years.
Now comes along a real cause where an emerging liberal democracy is invaded by Russia with no provocation and they are fighting for all those values the champions of freedom fighters in the past claimed they stood for. My partner has read many accounts on Twitter of Ukrainians who take inspiration from the American Revolution and want to turn Ukraine into the United States of eastern Europe. After decades of bogus stories about freedom fighters standing up for the righteous cause, one finally comes along and because the guy in the White House is from the wrong party and their last guy idolized the bad guys in this, all they can do is criticize.
theworld.org
www.europeantimes.news
