Absolutely true. When the old USSR broke apart, part of what Gorbachev wanted was that certain prior Soviet satellites not join NATO .The reason for this is security - the Russians don't want nukes on their borders.

One solution would have been to allow the Donbas to separate from the rest of Ukraine in return for NATO membership for Ukraine. That area has a majority of Russian speakers and was being harassed by other groups. So Putin could have claimed he was defending ethnic Russians while the rest of Ukraine could have joined NATO.

There are probably other solutions that might have prevented war. Why didn't we negotiate? Diplomacy always is better than war. People beating the war drums are idiots. They are not the ones who are now homeless or who are being conscripted to potentially die or kill someone else's child. What possible benefit is there to the United States to get involved?

Our involvement in toppling the governments of various Middle Eastern countries just resulted in lots of dead American soldiers, dead civilians including babies, poverty for countries that used to have a decent middle class, hunger, lack of medical care, etc., for the people remaining.

Because it destroys so much, war should always be a last resort. If there is a way to negotiate a peace, we should do it.

Of course the US has in the past done things I find heinous - such as putting Japanese Americans into internment camps and nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bombing those civilians could have been avoided if we'd simply given the Japanese ONE thing - they were willing to surrender voluntarily if we'd just respected the dignity of their Emperor. To me it seems a small thing to avoid the horrible deaths of so many civilians.