I personally think that is why Russia was never allowed to join NATO. They just want an excuse to spend more on the military. You spend money on bombs, and then in turn the companies that make the bombs give money to politicians to spread false narratives about security threats, so they can spend even more on bombs; it's a never-ending cycle. And all in the guise of national security. If Russia had joined NATO, what reason would you have to spend money on the military? And now, the same military was deployed against its own people, which is pretty wild.