Russia’s first strategy against further enlargement of NATO was to demand, on 15 December 2021, to the U.S. Government; and, two days later, to America’s main anti-Russian military alliance, NATO; that NATO would never add any new member-nations — especially not Ukraine. This demand was firmly rejected, on 7 January 2022, by both America and its NATO arm. Worse yet for Russia: after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, hoping thereby to prevent at least that country joining NATO, both Finland and Sweden were so scared that they might be invaded next, that both countries expressed in early April 2022 a desire to join the anti-Russian alliance, and were welcomed by America and its NATO arm to apply to join. So, even if Russia wins its war in Ukraine, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have actually failed, because NATO seems now more likely even than before to increase — exactly the opposite of what Russia had been intending.

A more effective strategy by Russia might nonetheless still be possible. If so, I think that it would be something like this:

Russia will announce that its nuclear missiles will be targeted ONLY against the U.S. and its allies, including all NATO member-nations, no neutral or not-U.S.-allied nations. Consequently: Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and any other nation that isn’t in NATO or otherwise treaty-bound militarily with the United States, will not be targeted by any Russian nuclear missiles.

In other words: any new NATO member-nation will thereby become a target added to Russia’s list for destruction in any WW III that might transpire between the United States and Russia.

Consequently, if  Finland or Sweden join NATO, then that nation’s likelihood of becoming annihilated if and when a Third World War starts, will enormously and suddenly increase, merely on account of that nation’s having become a NATO member.

Furthermore, Russia will simultaneously be announcing that if any nation wishes to have an assurance that Russia will never, under any circumstance, invade it, then Russia will welcome from that nation a request for such an assurance from Russia; and Russia will include in that announcement explicit invitations not only to Finland and Sweden, but to all other nations which have, at some time, expressed an intention or a possible future intention to join either NATO or one of America’s other anti-Russia military alliances, such as AUKUS. In this regard, Russia will also state that if ever Russia were to provide to a nation such an assurance and subsequently to violate it, then Russia would not only be violating its own tradition of rigidly adhering to international treaties that it has signed, but would also thereby be forfeiting any and all of its rights under international law, by doing so. In other words: Russia would, in advance, be surrendering to any country that it would subsequently be violating by its having invaded the country that it had promised never to invade. This in–advance promise to forfeit all of Russia’s rights under all international laws in any such circumstance, would be a surrender in-advance, under all existing international laws; and, consequently, under the arrangement that is being proposed here, there would be no nation in the entire world that has, or ever did have, so strict an international legal obligation as Russia would be having under this proposed arrangement.

Finally: this proposed arrangement will be offering, to all existing member-nations of NATO and of America’s other anti-Russian military alliances, a promise that if and when any such existing member-nation will quit that anti-Russian alliance, Russia will be happy to — at the moment that this is done — automatically provide to that nation the same legal commitment never to invade that nation, as has just been described here. In other words: the proposed arrangement will be offering, to the entire world, a stark and clear choice between two options: on the one hand, being allied with the most aggressive nation in all of the world’s history — the nation that sanctions, coups, and outright invades, any nation that fails to cooperate with its goal to replace the United Nations as being the ultimate arbiter of international laws, by the United States as being, instead, the ultimate arbiter of what it calls “the rules-based international order” (in which all of those ‘rules’ come ultimately from whomever rules the U.S. Government).  Versus, on the other hand: building upon and remaking the U.N. into what had been the original intention for it by its creator and namer, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which was for the U.N. to replace the historically existing (until now) rule-of-force by-and-between contending international empires, by, instead, a peaceful and democratic international order, in which there will be a “United Nations” which will be a worldwide federation of all nations, in which international laws will be produced by the global legislature of duly authorized (under each individual nation’s own internal laws) representatives; and adjudicated by the global Supreme Court, and enforced by the sole global possessor and user of strategic weaponry, the U.N. itself, so that penalties that are ruled by this global Court of international relations can be enforced against the Government of any nation that has been ruled by this Court to have violated the rights of any other nation’s Government.

In this understanding of the U.N.’s proper scope of power and of authority, the U.N. will have no authority and no power regarding the Constitution or laws of any nation that apply only internally to a given nation, but ONLY to international laws, which pertain only to international relations, never to a nation’s internal matters. FDR’s objective was to make another World War — another war between empires — impossible, by eliminating all empires, and replacing all of them by an international democracy of nations. Russia, in the proposed arrangement, would be striving to achieve, for the entire world, what FDR had planned for the post-WW-II world, but which tragically became promptly changed and abandoned by his immediate successor, Harry S. Truman — the founder (on 25 July 1945) of the present global U.S. empire (and of its hamstrung currently existing U.N.).