Lonewolf 50:
You wrote: "... it is my opinion that the 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia did serious damage to the US/NATO/Russian relationship that had been slowly improving during the90's."
Totally agree.
As for NATO extension/expansion eastward, the buzz and irritation here is based on the solid promises that Germany gave to Gorbachev during the agreement to remove the (Berlin) wall in late 80's. SU agreed wit hits reunification and started withdrawing the troops back home, which was a huge social pain to accommodate 330K+ military and 200K+ civilians as most of them did not have flats/houses in the homeland. SU and then Russia were undertaking costly unilateral steps and in return got a knife in the back. OK, Gorby and Yeltsin were narrow-minded and simply trusted Kohl and his men without bothering of thorough preparation of a binding treaty, which obviously was impossible to implement because Germany could not act on behalf of the whole NATO. Anyway, people here were left with a bad feeling about getting fooled.
GlobalNav:
You wrote: "Contrary to its past behavior, Russia does not hold sovereignty over its neighbors. Realistically, NATO membership by Sweden, Finland or any of the nearby states truly poses no military or security threat to the Soviet (oops Russian) state. This is only in the dangerous 20thc entury mindset of the Kremlin."
Sorry, did not understand the 1st sentence... Problems of the neighbors are their internal problems. Russian contribution to these problems is not more than that of US. Agree though that countries like Sweden, Finland (and all the others in Europe) are of no threat to Russia themselves.Threat is their serving as potential "mega-platforms" for US weapons.
Imagine Russia places serious arms in Cuba and start saying to guys at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: "Come on, it's not a threat at all, shut down your 60's mindset".