You conflate provocation with invasion. That is a facile argument. Hawaii joined the US “voluntarily” according to standard US history. Hawaiian history, and to their credit some world history, says it was a forced abdication of a sovereign leader followed by an annexation.

NATO was created to counter Soviet might post-WWII. Six years later the Soviet aligned countries created the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO. The USSR broke up in 1991. With no USSR to counter and no Warsaw pact, there is no reason for NATO to exist.

Expansion of NATO towards Russia since 1991 is part voluntary and part coercion by the sole superpower since the fall of the Soviet Union. That is provocation. US troops are stationed next to Russia. Missile systems in Poland— ostensibly to counter Iran (LOL!) — are on the border to Russia. The same in Romania (at least they are closer to Iran!).

I could go on for many paragraphs. I reject your attempt to narrowly define provocation to invasion.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is not a provocation to Ukraine, it is an attack. “Illegal” (possibly) by international law, but as we’ve seen, international law only applies to US adversaries and/or weak countries, so that in and of itself is (very sadly) a weak argument.

I’m done here. Bye now.