Putin's North Korean Soldiers

[Maxmars]

If NATO was obsessed with expansion then why does it have more partners than members? Quite a few of those partners could join NATO tomorrow (not literally) since they are already fully complaint with the values NATO abide by... That said, Turkey takes the piss and probably shouldn't be a member. Japan and South Korea are fully complaint as an example. So were the Swedes and Finnish, they didn't need MAP (Membership Action Plan) as they were already forward thinking nations from that "western" perspective.

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The NATO membership and structure was specifically established and engineered to deal with a singular political and ideological antagonist.  That antagonist is effectively gone.

What NATO is operating against now is not the same at all. 

Russia is a nation run by oligarchs and 'channeled' money... not "soviet" political will... their ideology is one of profit, not sovereign pride. 

As a result NATO changed it's modus operandi, intending to chip away at the former Soviet sub-entities and use capital gains as motivation... NATO was willing to exploit greed and corruption in former satellite states to achieve their ends... and here we are.  Hundreds of thousands dead or injured, infrastructures decimated or destroyed.  "Profit" has become too important to NATO... they have become as their very enemy now.  "Peace" is not their aim... "victory" is.

The US spent too much propping up NATO, who make their policy as informed by "other" institutions of an "international" nature... and as usual... those other clubs see U.S. tax-payer funding as an "entitlement" based upon their notional "good works" of the past.

NATO is not a nation... so the word 'expansion' is a metaphorical compromise to represent their fervor, zealotry, and pride to 'spread' through the world as "the" club to belong to.

I never resisted the idea of the promotion of economic and civil freedoms... but I do feel that profiteering from the effort is demonstrably counter-productive... in commerce their are only 'winners and losers' and this is what the former communist puppets railed against about 'capitalism,'  where one wins... their is always a 'loser.'  In the human world, an exploiter always stand over the exploited.

We will eventually work it out... and we keep trying to do just that,...

but meanwhile NATO is engaging in the games of the "economic hitman" based upon the motive of "winning, and getting rich in the interim."  It is a broken strategy that may have worked to some degree in the late 20th Century... but it cannot and should not become an entrenched manner of international conduct any longer.  It costs too much... it's too damaging... it ends too many lives. 

Russia is no saint here either.  It would appear that half of their operations are about 'posture' and 'roaring.' 
A perfect counter to NATO's pretense of "harmony and peace" being their goal.

Insofar as the economic games of the day... none of it is anything less than a banking illusion... no nation is 'self-sufficient' (or can ever be) as long as the "one" bank has a global monopoly on currency and monetary policy...  but NATO is entrenched in the banking world... and Russia's oligarchs are as well...

"In short, NATO is a lot more than am entity built for war, I'd also say it's a preferable entity that offers more security for the nation and individual compared to the alternatives."

I do apologize for that simplistic utterance, I admit that what NATO is "now" is a far cry from what it was ever said to be when the Soviets were knee-deep in their side-show of 'international politics.'  Even if it was directly constructed in specific response to 'Soviet/Communist military pressure.'

I stop short of saying that NATO (among other organizations) is just one of a number of political/marketing arms for the military industrial complex, and the weapons black market... only because it will never be proved to be true...  but I think that we need to be clear...

NATO isn't now what NATO says it is.