the butthurt-belt is precisely why nato is totally fucked if russia manages to achieve even minimal goals in ukraine.  first of all, it was a huge strategic mistake for nato to extend article 5 to post-soviet/post-warsaw countries. nato was not created to defend eastern europe, it was created to defend western europe. why is this important? because of shared history, most of which is rooted in geography. wars happen not because of someone's bright idea to go to war - they happen due to multi-layered neighbourly problems that encompass resources, family ties, religions, ethnicities, cultures, trade, etc. the reality is that western europe is extremely different from eastern europe by all criteria imaginable. and while nato may unite western europe under a mutual defence treaty, extending that defence treaty to eastern europe paralyzes the natural ability to re-balance and re-solve conflicts of interest in that region. rather than acting as an "enforcer of peace" in eastern europe, the real effect of nato's presence there is that it acts as a "refrigerator" that freezes all and any unresolved and growing differences, instead of actually resolving or rebalancing them. this transforms the region into a growing "cyst" of mounting disagreements, none of which are being resolved. this cyst will eventually explode once the amount of differences reaches a breaking point. and this is why you have a war in ukraine, why poland is arming itself to the teeth, why the baltic sea is getting militarized. they will tell you that it's all russia's fault, but in reality this crisis is emerging due to the political paralysis which nato has placed the region into. nato has no tools for natural and peaceful resolution of conflicting interests.
Lithuania