"While anyone with an ounce of decency deeply regrets and opposes the use of such massive military force as we have seen recently in Ukraine, if there is one lesson to be learned from this entire miserable chapter (and by "chapter" I mean the entirety of post-Cold War US foreign policy) it is this: There are consequences that come with the belief that the key to peace and prosperity is to remake the world in your own image through the use of overt and covert, violent and non-violent means. That lesson should have been learned with the fall of Soviet communism itself, but the "victors" were too full of hubris to pause for a moment of humility. Wishing reality was one thing and accepting that it is another are two very different things. The distinction must be made or the mass mental illness of "American exceptionalism" can never be cured. Otherwise the consequences next time the tectonic plates shift may be far closer to home. Whether America and the EU like it or not, the era of We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality" is well and truly over. Its end is not to be mourned but to be celebrated. The only pro-America foreign policy is non-intervention in the affairs of others."