Your posture is coherent and rational. Unfortunately, politicians are basically spineless morons because intelligent rational decisive people are de-selected by the democratic process. As such, the West has become incapable of responding to even the most blatant existential threat. NATO is a hollow joke and judging from the people I've been interacting with lately, no one in any of the three Baltic nations believes NATO would have any meaningful capacity to counter a forthcoming Russian invasion. Hence citizens are being trained in post-invasion guerilla resistance. Poland likewise has looked at NATO and realized it's a waste of time; that's why they have embarked on the largest and most rapid military buildup seen in Europe since WWII. Germany can't even pretend to have the capacity to defend itself, never mind come to the aid of others. The UK is a military joke. France will defend its own borders tenaciously but is highly unlikely to take risks in order to aid Estonia (for example). Italy, Spain, and Greece are all irrelevant. Turkey is now so little a part of NATO that it should no longer be a member of the alliance. The Danish military goes home on weekends. The Belgians spend so little on their military that a troop of scouts armed with slingshots could probably invade Bruxelles without much difficulty. I could go on, but the general point is clear: without the USA being at the forefront, NATO is useless. With Trump about to waddle back into the White House and the GoP now all-in on handing Ukraine to Putin, the USA is no longer of value. And so, NATO is pointless. Even if one or two politicians belatedly discovered a spinal column, Orban would continue to block Ukraine's membership of both the EU and of NATO, so the idea that either of these organizations can in any way be of any use is, alas, merely wishful thinking. The truth is, the West is finished. We're too dysfunctional, complacent, ignorant, stupid, and self-obsessed to see what's coming. It's a shame Ukraine and the Baltic nations will be the first to pay the price. I so much wish I was wrong and that your wishful thinking was right, but every single piece of hard data seems to point ineluctably downward now.
