'NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence'

'In the end, NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its own enlargement. At the Bucharest NATO Summit in April 2008, Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership, although Membership Action Plans (MAPs) were deferred because of German and French concerns that moving to Russia’s borders and encircling the country could provoke a dangerous reaction... This fateful geopolitical paradox – that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence – provoked a number of conflicts. The Russo-Georgian War of August 2008 acted as the forewarning tremor for the major earthquake that engulfed Europe over Ukraine in 2013-14.'

Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, in Monism vs. Pluralism, May 21 2015. 

Caitlin Johnstone recently said the same thing this year and I suspect her of plagiarism, that Romanian vice. Are they both right? I think so, yes.