DURING the Crimean War against Russia in the mid-19th century, Marx wrote this about the military build-up by Britain and France near the Black Sea, in Turkey:

“You cannot first frighten your enemy by enormous armaments and then try to make him believe that they are not intended to do any harm. The trick would be too shallow; and if it is expected to mislead the Russians by such paltry pretexts, British diplomacy has made another egregious blunder.”
 
Comrades, there is a long history of Western military preparations under false pretences, followed by military assaults on the Russian empire and after that the Soviet Union. It is not surprising that any patriotic Russian with a knowledge of history would have concerns about Nato’s eastwards expansion to the borders of Russia over the past three decades.

Nato, set up six years before the Warsaw Pact, still exists 30 years after the dissolution of the Pact and of the the Soviet Union itself. Nato’s membership has almost doubled since the collapse and counter-revolution in the socialist countries — and all the new member states are in central or eastern Europe.