Vitamin R: Paul Warburg Is Right! "NATO Expansion" Was Always a Lie.
- john raymond
- Jul 23
- 4 min read
There’s a reason the Kremlin keeps changing its story about Ukraine. One day it’s about NATO expansion, the next it’s about denazification, then it’s about protecting Russian speakers, or defending against Western decadence, or restoring the greatness of Holy Russia. The target shifts. The tone mutates. The pretext evolves. But the pattern is unmistakable. These are not sincere arguments. They are symptoms of a deeper disease. The lie is not incidental—it is structural.
And at the center of that structure is regime security dressed up as imperial destiny.
Paul Warburg recently dismantled the myth of NATO expansion with admirable clarity. He reminded his viewers that NATO never planned to invade Russia, that no binding agreement was ever made to limit expansion, and that every wave of NATO enlargement was in response to fear of Russia—not the other way around. He even quotes Gorbachev himself acknowledging that NATO fulfilled its post–Cold War promises. These points matter. But there’s another layer that Warburg touches but doesn’t fully excavate: why this lie exists, how it functions, and why it endures inside Russia’s own political ecosystem.
Let’s make something clear: “NATO expansion” is not a real grievance. It is a tool of internal regime cohesion. It exists to justify aggression abroad, yes—but more importantly, to justify repression, loyalty, and obedience at home.
The Raymond Method begins here: in asymmetric systems, you must always interpret surface narrative through the lens of regime survival. Not national interest. Not history. Not ideology. The regime lies because it must—because to tell the truth would destroy the coalition holding it together. And one of the Putin regime’s most powerful lies is the fantasy of a Russian Empire betrayed, encircled, and righteous in its revenge.
That fantasy has a purpose.
It gives Putin a banner under which to unite his security state, his oligarchs, his propagandists, and his priesthood of loyal technocrats. The idea of empire is how he ensures that those who might otherwise defect, squabble, or backstab remain aligned. It is not a governing program. It is not a policy. It is a myth of purpose that tells the elite why they must obey, and tells the population why they must endure. This is not empire as foreign conquest. This is empire as regime glue.
That’s why the rationale for war keeps changing—it doesn’t need to be logically coherent. It needs to be flexibly resonant. One justification speaks to the generals. Another speaks to the Orthodox. Another speaks to the tankies abroad. Another justifies censorship. Another justifies prison camps. But all serve one function: to preserve the regime by cloaking it in historical inevitability.
“Russia is not safe unless it is feared.” “Russia is not whole unless its empire is restored.” “Russia is not righteous unless the West is evil.”
Each line is a lie. But together, they build the scaffolding for domestic control.
And here’s the brutal irony: every country that has joined NATO since 1991 has done so because they saw through this lie. Because they remembered what it meant to live under Moscow’s boot. Because they saw that Putin was not defending Russia—he was rebuilding the machine that once devoured them. And they wanted no part of it.
The Kremlin pretends that NATO is expanding toward it. But in truth, it is Russia’s imperial paranoia that is expanding outward, looking for new enemies to justify its decay, new victims to preserve its myth. And when Putin looks westward, what he sees is not tanks or missiles—it’s the threat of truth. Of liberal democracy. Of accountability. Of systems that change leaders without bloodshed.
That’s the threat. That’s what must be crushed. Not because NATO was coming for Russia—but because Putin cannot survive in a world where truth moves faster than his lies.
So yes, Warburg is right: the facts destroy the myth. But facts are not the Kremlin’s operating system. Myth is. And the myth must be made flexible enough to serve the regime’s needs, yet grand enough to inspire loyalty. That’s why Putin keeps retooling the rationale. Not to persuade the West—but to keep the Kremlin’s internal circuits fused together in fear and purpose.
If you understand this, you understand everything:
The lie isn’t a mistake. It’s a strategy.
Empire isn’t a plan. It’s a glue.
“NATO expansion” isn’t a fear. It’s a lever.
And once you see it for what it is, you realize: Putin never needed a reason to invade Ukraine. He needed a reason to keep his regime from falling apart. Empire just happened to be the one myth big enough, flexible enough, and dangerous enough to do the job.
This is why the truth matters—not just as a defense of the West, but as a weapon against the lie. If we want to defeat the regime, we must first destroy the illusion that sustains it. That illusion is not NATO. It is not Ukraine. It is not the West.
It is a Russian empire that is never coming back. And the tyrant who knows it—but lies about it anyway.
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