Or that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was also avoidable."
Sure, I know all about those.
Winston Churchill even said World War Two was unnecessary, meaning, if the allies had done as he recommended before the war, it wouldn't have happened.
But none of that excuses the behavior of military aggressors invading another country without serious justification or just cause.
The fact that Churchill's contemporaries didn't do what he suggested -- which was, btw, to get tough with Hitler in the beginning, while Hitler was still weaker than he'd grow to later become -- that doesn't make Chamberlain, et al, responsible for the war, or prevent them from trying to protect other European countries from Hitler's aggressions.
The same is true with the NoKos in 1950 and Saddam in 1991.
In both cases, just like Hitler, aggressors perceived Western weakness and took the opportunity to do what aggressors naturally do -- invade their weaker neighbors.
It is exactly the same with Vlad the Invader in 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Ukraine and round two in 2022.
There is only one answer to aggressors, and that is they must be defeated while they are still weak, else they will grow stronger and increasingly difficult to defeat later.
nicollo: "U.S. diplomacy could have stopped all of them but did not, either from stupidity, willful ignorance, or, as clearly is the case with Ukraine, duplicity."
Sure, I have no doubt that under a Pres. Trump there would be no second invasion of Ukraine, or a first one either, had he been in charge in 2014.
Russians are not stupid, they know and respect genuine military force, just as they can smell weakness the way, in nature, a scavenger can smell a rotting corpse from miles away.
But all of that is irrelevant today.
Today there is only one imperative: Vlad the Invader must be defeated, and his orcs must die, or surrender or retreat the h*ll back to Russia.
Anything will be disastrous for the world, and for the USA especially.
As for your alleged "duplicity", Vlad the Invader is arguably the most brilliant Russian, and he was not "duped" into anything, much less into invading Ukraine twice!
Instead, Vlad wanted to annex Crimea, and so he did, in 2014.
Then he wanted to defeat Ukraine and annex the Donbas, and that's what he's still trying to do now, though the issue is not yet 100% decided.