Is NATO a direct military threat to Russia?

 So...it's no question that a strong NATO is not in Russia's interests. If NATO keeps expanding, it could box Russia in, in a way where it is at the mercy of NATO being friendly to it to allow it access to markets. Russia would thus, be of limited economic power, and be partially or wholly dependent on NATO cooperation in order to get the resources, goods, and services that a modern economy needs. That isn't good for Russia from a perspective of having an independent economy. Just like is happening now, NATO could shut down Russia's economy in its tracks. 

HOWEVER, how much does NATO really pose a MILITARY threat to Russia? Eh...in my opinion, not much. NATO is primarily defensive, and while having a bunch of NATO nations as neighbors might make Russia uncomfortable, let's be honest, a military invasion of Russia would be logistically difficult, and in my western centric perspective, not in its interests except as a last resort. 

The fact is, European invasions of Russia tend to be unsuccessful, and Russia literally IS the "graveyard of empires" in a way that's far more literal than Afghanistan's moniker. I actually wrote a paper on Napoleon in college, and a huge part of it was his invasion of Russia, because it was really his undoing. Basically, you need to time the invasion perfectly in the spring or summer in order to make as much progress as you can by the time winter comes along. Napoleon originally only planned to go as far as Smolensk, before setting in for the winter. But then he got greedy and went all the way to Moscow. Russia baited him. They basically pushed this strategy of "scorched earth" where they would just keep retreating, but burn everything in the path of the French to deny them resources. This led to Napoleon rushing in to attack Moscow, which he reached in early winter, and it was pretty much burned to the ground. And then...things got bad for Napoleon. They overextended their supply lines, their troops were cold, hungry, and underprepared, and then the Russians shifted to a form of guerilla warfare where the army was wrecked hard. They ended up retreating, with the Russians attacking them the whole way home. This led to the allies being able to defeat Napoleon, where he got exiled to Elba. Then he came back, waterloo happened, you know the rest. But what really broke his army was Russia.

I mean, something people seem to forget is that Russia is very very cold, and very very large. It's very well possible for the Russians to just keep retreating for thousands of miles if need be, drawing the enemy in, and then letting the brutally cold winters freeze the invading armies to death. And then they go on the offensive, drive the enemies back, and show no mercy in the process.

That's actually how Russia became as powerful as it did post WWII in the first place. Nazi Germany did the same thing, and invaded Russia, only to eventually get driven back after reaching as far east as Moscow and Stalingrad. This led to them pushing the Nazis all the way back to Germany, which led to the cold war.

There were plans to invade the USSR after that, but they were never put into practice. Because, again, it's not really feasible to attack Russia, nor is it worth it to try. Most plans seemed to involve trying to reunite Germany or liberate Poland, but very few were really put into place to invade Russia. And honestly, given the role of nuclear weapons it would have meant the end of the world. So honestly? NATO ended up being primarily defensive, and in a post cold war environment, invading Russia doesn't even make sense. There's a reason we aren't doing more with helping Ukraine. It's because the west doesnt actually want war with Russia, because that would be devastating to everyone involved. 

The fact is war with Russia is not preferred for three reasons.

1) They have nukes

2) They are not some backwater country with hardly any military. Although to be fair Russia's military may not be the threat we think it is. Still, their numbers and armaments on paper are massive.

3) Invading Russia is logistically impossible given its inhospitable terrain and the fact that we would be an invading army fighting a largely guerilla force

4) In a conventional war, given the difficulties associated with 2 and 3, a clear victory would be practically impossible.

Really, the most we really want to ever do is what we're doing now. Cut off Russia economically and force them to play nice. We have no intentions on invading, and the prospect of it isn't feasible in practice. If we were going to, we probably would've kept going east after WWII. 

I'm literally watching Biden do his state of the union right now, and he agrees. He's talking about defending NATO territory. NATO is primarily defensive. And while it's shifting east, most people are joining these days because they want protection from Russia. Honestly? Russia should play nice. That's really all the west is asking. If they cause no problems, they'll have no problems. We're not going to invade them. We just want them to not forcefully expand westward toward US like they're doing with their invasion of Ukraine.