[dragonwriter]

Yeah, and the one lesson we should certainly take from the past is that taking a pass on containment to appease powerful, aggressive states never leads to those doing so (including, but limited to, Americans) paying a very high, avoidable price in blood and treasure overseas as a consequence when not trying to contain aggression surprisingly does not contain the aggression.

[alienicecream]

I can see this conversation is leading to Hitler. But sometimes containment leads to a stupid quagmire which you should never have been in in the first place, like Vietnam, and security guarantees to backwards unstable countries leads to larger, more all consuming wars like WW1. Ukraine and Georgia are Russia's back yard, we have no business there.