1) The Treaty of Versailles led directly into to WWII. At the time, I would have been strongly with Keynes - it was a stupid treaty, it caused massive amounts o

1) The Treaty of Versailles led directly into to WWII. At the time, I would have been strongly with Keynes - it was a stupid treaty, it caused massive amounts of damage, the victors should have negotiated a fair peace and the allied powers may as well have started re-arming immediately on the assumption that war was coming. If you assumed German policy was motivated by some level of cause-and-effect it is hard to avoid that treaty being an expensive mistake. And in the aftermath of WWII, note that the policies were occupation and rebuilding. Indeed, the US's learning "don't do another Versailles" lead to the peaceful reconstruction of Japan and Germany in a way that should be the gold standard for every post-war strategy. 2) Your statement is hair away if not already trying to justify the invasion. If you take a holistic view, you'd probably guess (correctly) that I think this invasion is unjustified, but is in the same class of unjustified invasions as Iraq or Afghanistan - unjustified, they happen from time to time and the best that can be done is just calm the situation down ASAP. It was always a better option to go with more diplomacy and the US should be assisting in that. But the Ukraine invasion wasn't a flight of fancy, everyone who has looked at the topic seriously agrees there is a long backstory of build ups. The only real debate point is which ones are more significant. I think US pressure, since the US is the most powerful entity involved in the war there and it is unlikely that started with Russia crossing the border.