Historically Russia has sought to avoid conflict with NATO in the same way we have with them, there's nothing at all to suggest Russia would attempt to invade a NATO member. Largely because as much as they talk big, they're aware of the disparity between NATO and Russian Armed forces.
Whilst I tend to agree with your logic to some extent you need to remember.
Russia as a power individually is only reasonably recently returned to the world stage. They were part of the USSR for most of the post war period until today.
Only once the USSR fully collapsed did Russia individually have an issue with NATO. Many of the other parts of that USSR now being within NATO. So clearly a large part of the USSR didn't have any issue with NATO.
After the collapse of the USSR the military machine that had been the USSR was heavily fragmented. With a lot of the equipment being in places now not under Russian influence. Such as the famous nukes in Ukraine.
With those massive issues Russia struggled for a while. Fleets going into mothball etc. Then they started modernising and slowly actually getting closer to their theoretical power.
Simply until fairly recently Russia would have only had limited opportunity to directly invade or attack a NATO member. Well certainly a NATO member that was not quite capable themselves.
As NATO expanded East then that got closer to home.
There was a big difference between when the USSR started collapsing and the now unified Germany was the nearest Western NATO member to Russia and where we are now.
Generally until Putin the friction between NATO and Russia was reducing. It was Putin that restoked the nationalism to levels they are now in Russia.
It was Putin who is behind the main friction. He had ideals of reuniting some of the USSR under his watch, it was becomingly increasingly unlikely to happen and as such he reached (before I figured he would) the point when he decided enough was enough.
Russia could have easily been far more significant on the world stage. There levels of corruption etc means they fall so far below their potential.
Western leaders are to blame as well. We got too accustomed to peace, and the thoughts that the cold war was over. In a way that probably fuelled Putins issues more.
We went from putting a lot of forces and troops on the borders of the USSR to pretty much basically ignoring Russia. As if we considered them no threat at all. Which in reality is pretty much what our position was.
www.theguardian.com
plus.thebulwark.com
