from a Polish perspective Russia has as much right to object to US bases or NATO membership as Poland does to tell Russia to shutdown it's own bases in Russia, or to draw down its military.

That assumes that Russia poses a credible threat to the security and/or legitimate interests of Poland and the Baltics. There is precious little evidence for this.

On the other hand, there is rather a lot of evidence that the US (and by extension NATO) poses a credible threat to legitimate Russian interests, including not having failed states in their immediate vicinity, and not having strategic weapons deployed less than a day's tank drive from Moscow.

If this analysis is wrong, then I'd like to see some evidence for that fact.

Other than that, I think that your analysis is generally sound, at least in the short term. I draw a rather different conclusion from it, though. Given that I don't consider Russia a credible threat to any EU country or to legitimate EU interests, I think that the EU can do without Polish and Baltic posturing. And if that means doing without Poland and the Baltics altogether, then that's just tough luck. We'll survive without them, but we won't survive without political independence from Washington and a functioning union.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.