The United States together with 31 other NATO members is celebrating the alliance's 75th anniversary this week.
"NATO expansion has turned what once arguably (pre-March 1953) could have been called a defensive alliance into a (post-1992) classic tail-wags-the-dog situation," Carden said.
That has resulted in the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states "pushing their parochial agenda on the United States," he said.
"Not a good state of affairs but here we are," Carden concluded.
Even at the height of the Cold War, and a quarter century before the peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO's tendencies to over-extend itself to the east and become a tool for the continued US domination and micro-management of Europe had been noted by the great, visionary French statesman President Charles de Gaulle, Carden pointed out.
"Over-extension is the core issue, identified early on by no less a statesman than de Gaulle, who intuitively understood that the opening of the European Economic Community (ECC) to the United Kingdom (UK) would introduce an American Trojan horse into the most sensitive issues of European economic affairs," he said.
For years, Moscow has objected to NATO's continued expansion and military buildup near Russian borders. Ukraine's plans to join the bloc were among the reasons why Russia launched its special military operation in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin said.
In response to the latest NATO enlargement, Russia will station its troops and strike systems near the borders of Finland and Sweden, Putin said in a March interview with Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev for the Rossiya 1 broadcaster and RIA Novosti.