Native Americans appeased the US till there was nothing left. You don't tend to see many appeasers around because there is nothing left of them.

I agree, and even Hitler is dubious. I am Czech, and the Munich Agreement is very emotionally painful for us. However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives. (Nor would fighting against Russian invasion in 1968, btw.)

And arguably in the case of Ukraine the appeasement already happened after 2014 Donetsk war.

I also heard that appeasement was backreaction to WW1, where everybody was eager to go to war and it ended in bloodshed.

>What's the data point, beyond Hitler ?

Ukraine 2014. The West should have stopped Russia back then and there.

> If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime...

First, I wouldn't call this authoritarian[1] but imperialistic[2].

But semantics aside, I don't really get that line of argument. Do you think the US invading parts of the middle east was justified? If you do not, how can this comparison be used to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

I do condemn both invasions!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism

Who is the "we" that should be negotiating? The US, EU, and NATO aren't parties to the conflict. Russia and Ukraine are free to negotiate at any time, and in fact have already held talks at several points during the conflict.

I assume thought, that you favor some sort of negotiated settlement. How much territory should Ukraine cede to Russia in exchange for peace? And what would prevent Russia from coming back and taking another slice in a few years? Remember they already did this once before in 2014.

While I disagree with your other comments, I totally agree with denuclearization. Expanding NATO (founded on nuclear deterrence paradigm) as a reaction to Russia is wrong.

>The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily.

The problem is you think they "own" them.

>If the US can invade the middle east

One nation they invaded was Iraq, and while catastrophic, they've created a democracy that later told US to fuck off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Fo...

You can very much argue against that, and I'd agree, but it's not comparable to colonial war of aggression to literally enslave and genocide free nation.

>I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border against the other nuclear superpower.

They are far from anything super, as we've seen in Kharkiv Oblast last week.

There's a series of videos that document how Macron talked to Putin (including the famous one where Putin cuts him short because he has to train for ice hockey), and Macron clearly says he has the message from Biden that he'd meet Putin. That must have been in February.