Russia’s belief that they are entitled to vassal buffer states.

For decades, I have been hearing that the existence of NATO really outrages the Russians. They are also really pissed that the nations on their border with western Europe are not vassal buffer states.

They punished for a while with the Warsaw Pact.

We never gave a rat’s rump about the Warsaw Pact.

Russia is two miles away from us in the Bering Strait. Mexico borders on us and it is a bad place with cartels and a Marxist government and letting illegal immigrants cross our border.

Russia borders Finland, an enemy. Now, also the now NATO Baltic states that used to be part of USSR, Turkey which is a NATO country, Azerbaijan which is another NATO country, China, and Japan which has been an enemy of Russia multiple times.

So this notion that Russian has to be surrounded by vassal buffer states is not applied to any border other than part of the western border. What if its neighbors demanded the same thing between them and Russia?

And why do we have to humor the Russians in this regard. You are not entitled to control your neighbors in any way. Duh. 

Some egg head said we have the current problem because we failed to understand how important this was to Putin and Russia. Bull! The problem stems from little Vlad’s nutty delusions of grandeur.

johnreed@johntreed.com