> I want you to imagine a scenario where China forms a military relationship with Canada and/or Mexico and builds a whole bunch of forward operating and missile bases along the US border.
How is that relevant? Nobody built any "forward operating and missile bases" in the entire Eastern Europe, and those that used to be in Western Europe have been largely dismantled in the decades that followed the Cold War. What "hostile missile bases" are you talking of? Can you name a single one?
If Ukraine joined NATO then, by definition, every military base in Ukraine woudl be a NATO forward operating base on Russia's border.
I notice you avoided the hypothetical about China putting military bases along the US border in Mexico and Canada because there's no answer to that: everybody knows we would never accept it. So why should Russia?
> If Ukraine joined NATO then, by definition, every military base in Ukraine woudl be a NATO forward operating base on Russia's border.
That's quite a retreat from "building missile bases along borders".
But you're still wrong. NATO's primary role is to provide command structures and planning capabilities to coordinate multinational military responses. Military forces and installations remain under national control and are only made available to NATO command structures when member states voluntarily choose to contribute them to a specific mission. Essentially, NATO functions as a coordination bureau rather than a unified standing army.
As for Ukraine specifically, the prospect of joining NATO was shelved by Germany and France in 2008 due to Russian objections. Public support in Ukraine stood at 20-30%, and after a Russian-backed candidate was elected president in 2010, all efforts toward gaining membership were halted. The topic did not resurface until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
How is that relevant? Nobody built any "forward operating and missile bases" in the entire Eastern Europe, and those that used to be in Western Europe have been largely dismantled in the decades that followed the Cold War. What "hostile missile bases" are you talking of? Can you name a single one?