"We face the most dangerous situation in American foreign policy since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russians have put their nuclear arsenal on high alert and warned us to stay out of their invasion of Ukraine. Our “experts” in government and the
media feed us a stream of information oscillating between fear-mongering and hopeful arrogance: They tell us on the one hand that Russia’s territorial ambitions won’t stop at Ukraine and will eventually threaten all of Europe, but on the other hand
that the Russian army is bogged down and on the brink of humiliating defeat. They tell us in one breath that we can safely escalate our involvement, but in their next panicked breath declare that Putin is a madman who is capable of anything. They
reassure us that a “No Fly Zone” won’t precipitate World War III, while sometimes openly declaring that we’re already in World War III so let’s just get on with it already.

How can any American citizen listening to these contradictory and reckless statements have confidence in our expert class? We’ve just lived through more than two years of another group of experts giving us a constantly-shifting set of theories and
guidelines around Covid, only to see many of those confident predictions and pronouncements unravel.

But while those health experts got a lot wrong, our foreign policy establishment has gotten everything wrong for over two decades. They spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya and only made all of those situations worse,
unleashing staggering death and destruction. In every case, they told us we were winning and our policy objectives were being achieved, up until the very moment when our withdrawal laid bare the extent of our total failure.
...
This War Was Preventable

First, it is my belief that the war in Ukraine could have been prevented. Asserting this in no way implies that anyone other than Vladimir Putin is responsible for starting this war.
...
Will Peace be Prevented Too?

That brings us to the present day. We can all agree that we sympathize with the Ukrainians in their desire to defeat Russian aggression and to be free of Russian domination. The Ukrainians have fought fiercely and bravely for their sovereignty. While
opposing U.S. military involvement, I have supported arming the Ukrainians under Cold War rules so they can fight for their own freedom. I also believe that targeted sanctions can create pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table. But it must be
our objective now to help achieve a ceasefire and negotiated peace rather than protract the conflict.

Peace negotiations have been underway for a few weeks now, and the broad contours of a potential deal have been clear for some time: Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees; the recognition of Russia’s annexation of
Crimea, which has been a fait accompli since 2014 and which is supported by the vast majority of people who live there; and some form of independence for the Russian-speaking areas in the Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, which would bring an end to the
bloody civil war that has been raging there.

The United States should do everything it can to support such a deal. We don’t have a vital national interest in the details of who rules the Donbas. We do have a vital national interest in avoiding the existential risks of a protracted war. These
risks include escalation into a wider war that could even involve nuclear weapons, the escalation of economic warfare or inflation that tips the West into recession, and damage to the global food supply chain causing potential famine around the world."

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-state-department-failed-to-prevent-the-war-will-it-now-prevent-the-peace/

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