Originally Posted by
Ronald Reagan
It also comes down to Washington's desire to control them,
Nope.
I was involved in some work with former Eastern Bloc nations (Ukraine, Romania, Hungary mostly) and their military folks, during the 90's in the NATO "Partnership for Peace" era of the cold war thawout. 15-20 years ago. The consistent theme I ran across went something like this:
The nations involved wanted into the NATO relationships for a lot of reasons, the main one of them being financial, the other main one being fear/wariness of the Russians. There were other reasons as well, to do more with EU and European relationships than anything to do with the US of A. We had a little bit of PfP work with a few Russian teams, but I didn't get as involved with them as some of my colleagues did on other projects. There was a Russian liaison office established in Brussels, IIRC at NATO HQ, during the late 90's.
The intent was there for a closer working relationship, not a further estrangement.
As an American, I was against NATO expansion. Hell, I am for bringing our troops home from Europe, and was back then.
It was enough of a chore to fold in Spain, once Spain they decided to be "all in!" (Truth here: I was glad when Sarkozy got France to finally be "all in!" instead of "sort of in" NATO after DeGaulletossed his toys out of the pram in the 60's).
Ronald, in the nations that spent 40-50 years in the Soviet/Russian sphere, the experience taught a lot of people a lot of things about the Russians.
It seems "trust" isn't one of them.
Sad but true. I don't think it has to be that way, and I do wish it were otherwise.