They did stop. There was that long period from 1990 to 2014 where they were withdrawing their military influence.

Russia was not "withdrawing" by choice. Being kicked out of Eastern Europe was the result of USSR's total economic collapse and inability to feed its soldiers, provide electricity and heating to their barracks, or fuel for their vehicles. It got so bad that officers were forcing conscripts into street prostitution to earn money for food. They were not in a position to suppress the native populations anymore, and gladly packed up their stuff and left in exchange for shipments of American chicken legs.

But even those difficulties did not prevent Russia from using the same old blueprint of coming to the "rescue" of "oppressed minority" time and time again, as much as their means allowed. From Crimea and Donbas in 2014, to Georgia in 2008, to Abkhazia and Transnistria and others in the 1990s, to Afghanistan in the 1980s, to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, and countless other "missions in support of brotherly nations", the chain of intrusions into other countries remains unbroken.

There are a lot of reasons why a war might not have happened, but given that a war has actually happened it only makes sense to look why it did. The NATO budget was allowed to shrink because the USSR budget imploded - NATO was still outspending Russia by more than 10:1.

Money is meaningless metric when Russian military relies on the massive stockpiles created many decades ago. In Europe, much of that spending went towards destroying Cold War era stockpiles to cut long-term storage costs. As a result, Germany has less tanks in its entire arsenal than Russia has lost in Ukraine in the past few weeks, and in the few weeks prior to that, and in the few weeks prior to that too. In total, Russia has lost 40 times the entire German tank fleet.

Yes. If not for encircling Russia, what use is Estonia to the US? Why else put military resources there?

There were no permanent American "military resources" in Estonia, or anywhere else in Eastern Europe, before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The specific deployment of those missiles isn't really the point; the point is that the US would never tolerate a whisper of something like NATO but directed against the US on the American continent.

The US already tolerates it. China has military installations on Cuba, which is more than there ever was in Eastern Europe. The entire Europe tolerates nuclear missiles aimed at them from Kaliningrad.

But, that said, NATO leadership are liars. They said they weren't going to expand NATO, then they did. If they say they aren't going to station missiles in their new military allies you'd be a bit gullible to believe that. It is believable if they say missiles won't be stationed until they are sure Russia can't do anything about it.

Nobody has promised that, or has even been in a position to give such promises. Here's Gorbachev calling it directly a myth, and his defense minister saying that he's never heard about it: https://x.com/splendid_pete/status/1650735533826375680

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO - or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:History_of_NATO_enlargeme... if you like visuals.

I don't. Put it into words, if you can. If you are trying to argue that European countries cannot freely choose to cooperate with each other, then Russia has reiterated in multiple treaties their respect (at least in words) for sovereign countries to choose their allies. Huffing and puffing about NATO became mainstream in Russia years after Eastern Europe had entered the organization; as Putin began the transition of Russia into full dictatorship in the late 2000s.

* * *

All in all, your position appears to stand on known falsehoods:

1. That someone had promised to Russians that Central and Eastern European countries would be left isolated and not accepted into any international organizations. Not true.

2. That the acceptance of Central and Eastern Europe into international organizations was some kind of Western scheme and not their own passionate initiative against lukewarm reactions from existing members. Again, not true.

3. That the Americans were placing military resources in Europe. Not true. Leaders of those countries really wanted American and other western military presence to bolster their security against such wars like Russia launched against Ukraine, but never got anywhere with it, because even a possibility of such scenario was not taken seriously.

4. That Russians have been mistreated, humiliated, ignored and so forth. Again, not true, refuted by people who were in the center of the events, like Russian foreign minister Kozyrev.

Drop these falsehoods, and your argument crumbles under its own weight.