The United States of Hypocrisy: Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine

[Xolodno]

3. To correct you a bit, NATO was an alliance to stop Soviet expansionism.

After its collapse, then it turned more political and the military alliance was repositioned to keep peace around the world and fight terrorism. This is when Russia was often included in numerous missions with NATO. Yeltsin even asked to join NATO at one point and Clinton implied that could happen.

https://time.com/5564207/russia-nato-relationship/

But that got fucked up under W. Bush. He went reckless with foreign policy, expanding NATO with no regard to the implications and twisting the arms of allies to get it done and even ignoring NATO's revised purpose, keep peace and fight terrorism. Instead he fights terrorism as a secondary mission even after we got hit on 9/11 and starts a war in Iraq.

And any overtures of allowing Russia to join NATO vanish with Cheney and Rumsfeld at the helm. Far as they were concerned, Russia was a defeated enemy that needs to stay defeated, do what it was told and like it. That resulted from friendly NATO - Russia relations to Russia turning to opposition. Now were forced with a mess that the GOP hawks created and no good way to get back.

In the case of Putin, he and many other former KGB agents went into politics, government administration, industries, etc. and slowly rose up the ranks. Some have even speculated that this was the rough plan of the KGB should the Soviet Union collapse.

So you could call it a "KGB Mafia". They rose to be oligarchs and Putin became the boss oligarch. And those that didn't play game, got the boot.