Is Putin Really Invading Ukraine Because NATO Expanded?

As Vladimir Putin continues Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,¹ we hear a number of people saying that it is the fault (or at least mostly the fault) of the United States and the West.  We promised the USSR in 1990, and then Russia later, that NATO would not expand eastward.  Even if the promise was not formally written, it was implied.  The expansion of NATO threatened Russia.  They felt surrounded.  Etc.

Which may sound plausible.  The question, however, is whether it really would have made any difference if NATO had not expanded.  If countries in eastern Europe had not started applying to NATO in the 1990s, would Russia’s economic reforms have worked?  Would Boris Yeltsin have been able to create a real democracy in Russia?  Would the oligarchs have not stolen the country blind?  Russia’s internal chaos in the 1990s was not caused by the expansion of NATO.  It was caused by Russian incompetence. 

The argument seems to be that Vladimir Putin would have been different if Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic had not joined NATO in 1999 and seven more countries, including the Baltics, had not joined in 2004.  But that assumes Poland, the Baltics, Romania, etc., would have been willing to be obedient clients of Russia.  Does anybody seriously think that, even if the Poles were not in NATO, they would have been willing to do what Russia told them?  Or that the Baltics would have been willing to do what Vladimir Putin ordered?

Georgia had its Rose Revolution in 2003.  Ukraine had its Orange Revolution in 2004.  Are we to assume Poland, the Baltics, and others, would not have had color revolutions of their own if they were not in NATO and Russia tried to run their governments?  These are some of the most anti-Russian countries in NATO.  Would they be any less anti-Russian, or at least anti-Putin, if they hadn’t joined NATO?

Vladimir Putin’s real complaint is not that some of his neighbors are in NATO.  His real complaint is that they are not client states of Russia, just as Ukraine does not want to be.   If he wants to understand why, all he has to do is to read history and look in the mirror.
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¹ It started in 2014.
UPDATE (2/23/22 9:20 pm): Changed "problem" to "real complaint" in two places in the last paragraph.  It more accurately states the point.
FURTHER UPDATE (2/24/22 4:45 pm): A slightly modified and lightly edited version of the above was published in the Letters to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune.  You can find it here.
CORRECTION (3/11/22 11:40 pm): While Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic formally joined NATO in March of 1999, they were invited to join in July of 1997, and NATO foreign ministers signed Protocols on their joining in December of 1997.  (See here.)  This difference in date does not affect the point of the argument.