Mel, eastern European nations might wish to be part of the EU and NATO, it does not mean its in our interests for them to be so though! The question has to be asked ''what is in it for us?'' As I already said they are militarily weak, so bring little in terms of capability to the alliance, in fact letting them join seems to have given us considerable defence liability but for not much in return. Having all out war with Russia seems a very bad idea but then again the west tends to underestimate every country its ever gone up against, the problem now though is Russia is not some small weak nation, it has enough nuclear forces to end human civilisation on this planet. Letting some arm chair generals who dream of war run policy is not a good idea, we have to come to a realistic solution and not some pipe dream fantasy that some western governments would like to see. The best and easiest way to achieve this would be turn a blind eye to the events in Ukraine while ensuring we maintain strong and capable military forces to defend our homeland against any possible future threats from anyone, but not to go on continuous pointless foreign adventurism. If the west, especially Washington miscalculate they could drag us all into World War 3 and it could be the end of everything.
Fitter2, the difference between the 1930s and now is that we would be talking about all out nuclear war, the end of everything, so we have to avoid that at all costs.