The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia is the result of decades of ill-conceived foreign policy priorities in the West.

Ever since George F. Kennan's post-WWII containment policy became gospel in most Western capitals, the world's bad actors have been able to exploit the West's reluctance to confront and defeat tyrannies because of its exaggerated fear of provoking the escalation of conflicts. The goal of containment and detente was to maintain the status quo of a world divided between two rival superpowers-and not to defeat evil.

World War II came to a successful end because the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and the Allies made sure that the imperialist beasts that had rampaged across the earth were caged and defanged.

However, starting with Korea, with few exceptions Western powers since WWII have sued for peace while the enemy was still unvanquished and hence capable of recovering and renewing its aggression. Thus today the world continues to suffer from a belligerent North Korea, and it took Ronald Reagan's policy of "We win. They Lose" to end the predations of the Soviet Union and free its subject peoples from Moscow's oppression.

Ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin, a relic of the USSR, has turned Russia from a Communist state into a fascist state. He has been encouraged in his current aggression against Ukraine by the feeble Western response to his earlier predations in Georgia and Crimea. This pattern of Western appeasement of predatory states must change. Ukraine must get all the support it needs to defeat Russia decisively. Ukraine can win and it must win.