Sweden became NATO’s newest member on Thursday (7 March 2024), upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the Government of the United States in Washington DC. With Sweden’s accession, NATO now counts 32 countries among its members.
Russia can't even conquer a quarter of Ukraine. No chance they're going to invade Sweden, a country they don't even share a border with. Is Canada afraid of being invaded by Russia? Is France? Is the UK?
I agree, the USSR assumed too much good faith on the part of NATO. Millions of casualties from economic devastation later, nationalist wars are still breaking out between former soviet states, and Nazism is on the rise.
There are other things to learn in history too, such as some countries, like Russia, simply lacking resources to fight wars this big. As the other commenter said, they can't get past Ukraine.
Hitler comparison is really out of place here. It's more similar to some of the wars in Africa and Latin America.
The only reason they can't get past ukraine at the moment is because of western intervention. If the west hadn't supported ukraine in they way they have lukies map would be a reality already
Russia's inability to conquer any of its neighbors is irrelevant. The possibility of them even attempting is unacceptable if you share a border with Russia. Sure, maybe Putin can't hope to depose your government, but the destruction and deaths before his failure are still a horrifying reality that'll take years, possibly decades, to recover from.
As for why Sweden felt the need to join, despite not having a single meter of border with Russia, it's because Finland felt the need to join. The two countries are tightly bound and do not want to end up on the opposite sides of a war. Now they're much less likely to.
Russia can't conquer even a quarter of Ukraine, and they still invaded Ukraine. Sweden and Finland know that Russia can't conquer them, and that knowledge has made them stay neutral in the past. But Russia has just shown with Ukraine that they might try anyway just because, and it's a huge pain in the ass for Ukraine and for everybody else in Europe too. So it's only natural that Sweden and Finland would like to avoid even being tried to be conquered by Russia.
And like we can see, the Russian invasion of Ukraine also impacts France, the UK, and Canada. It's not that these countries have decided to brainlessly follow the US. They want to support other countries who are at more risk of being invaded by Russia because countries being invaded by Russia is a huge pain in the ass for everybody in the region, not just the country being invaded. So their foreign policy goals simply happen to line up with the US goals.
Lol what a braindead take, I'm sure when this is all over Ukraine will be like "oh, well looks like we didn't need to be part of NATO after all, we did just fine on our own"