You mean good enough to buy NATO-grade American weapons, surely. But anyway, obviously the allegiance matters - if anything because they already got troops and missiles deployed there, so the risk for Russian assets is too high - you can hit St. Petersburg from Tallinn with little more than a fishing boat.
Besides, there is no reason for Putin to claim those, nor a real strategic value. Ukraine has value: the pipelines, the coast, the Dnieper, and the example for Belarusians not to get ideas once Lukashenko goes. That it would remain a Moscow satellite was basically the agreement post-1990, this makes it more explicit. Sucks for self-determination and all that, but again, avoiding nuclear holocaust is probably worth losing the occasional battle.
I'm going on the assumption that you haven't visited those countries or you would realize that the sentiment runs a lot deeper than being allowed to buy NATO grade American weapons, those countries have Russian occupation in living memory and very much won't go back to those days without a fight.
> Besides, there is no reason for Putin to claim those, nor a real strategic value.
The strategic value of Lithuania or the North of Poland for Russia can not be underestimated.
> Sucks for self-determination and all that, but again, avoiding nuclear holocaust is probably worth losing the occasional battle.
It isn't the West that is threatening nuclear holocaust here, Putin did just that on live television and if that threat works this time I don't see any reason why it would not work the next.
Historically appeasement of dictators never ends well, I don't see why this would be the exception.
> you would realize that the sentiment runs a lot deeper than being allowed to buy NATO grade American weapons
Oh but I referred to sentiment at the other end of the alliance.
> if that threat works this time I don't see any reason why it would not work the next.
Eh, I don't completely disagree, but the risk/reward calculation of invading a full NATO member with deployed military infrastructure is undoubtedly different - if anything because the stay-behind capabilities in those areas would be very difficult to uproot.
> Historically appeasement of dictators never ends well
The luxury of getting rid of dictators in certain countries by swinging a bigger club, effectively ended in Hiroshima in 1945.
Good enough to supply troops to NATO, not good enough to be defended when it matters? They should go back to 1989 as well?