What would happen if Canada joined a mutual defense pact with Russia? Or Mexico? Think about this scenario, would the US invade immediately?. Something similar actually happened with Cuba in the 60s, and the US invaded them, doing a total naval siege [1]
The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact with the USSR.
The US didn’t invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do so in the embarrassing Bay of Pigs disaster which took place before the naval blockade as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Naturally, Bay of Pigs should never have happened, and it’s one of the things that led to the CIA’s powers and freedom from oversight being drastically curtailed the following decade.
Furthermore, the world and international law has moved on since the 1960s. That sort of brinkmanship has been much reduced.
"nothing should" is correct; "nothing would" is fantasy
> The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact with the USSR.
Yes, putting nukes there brought things to a serious crisis, but the issue with Cuba
> The US didn’t invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do so
Come on, let's be real here. Sure, _technically_ the US didn't invade Cuba. But it funded and assisted a mercenary force in a (very poor) attempt to do so. And that wasn't the only time the US tried to force regime change in Cuba, just like it did in Chile.
If we’re talking about funding and supporting local groups, activists, and insurgents, then we’re going to have to cast the net far wider and include many similar actions by the USSR and then Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Israel, and many others.
That might be a worthwhile discussion to have, but it’s categorically not the same thing as invasion, occupation, and annexation.
And just like it tries to still do in Venezuela. They also did something similar in Nicaragua. Latin America has suffered tremendously from the US's Monroe Doctrine. [1]
You are conveniently omitting the reason why all those Eastern European states wanted to join NATO, which is that they were previously invaded and occupied by USSR and/or Imperial Russia, in some cases more than once (e.g. Poland).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis