>>We might have considered these facts before we started prodding the bear more than 30 years ago.

Excellent idea! No reason for people ever under the Soviet thumb to have their own countries. No reason they should have an iota of self-determination. No reason ethnic Russians should not control populations about equal in numbers to their own. (That number doubles if you include the ethnicities still under control of the Russian Empire - and those are the people the RF is throwing into the Ukranian meatgrinder.) No reason they shouldn't be able to kill millions in Ukraine - again.

This war is totally our fault; letting people decide what they want to do is completely on us.

If it's not clear enough, that was sarcasm. Yes, NATO was established as an anti-Soviet organization, but it was primarily a defensive organization as the USSR vastly overmatched individual European nations - and it was clear that if they had to face the Sovs one at a time, they would fall.

Also, I'd point out that, yes, the ruble is trading higher - but it's at a much lower volume than before. And much of that is for Chinese yuan; if you dig into that, owning yuan seems... problematic. Read McMahon's "China's Great Wall of Debt" for an analysis. On top of that, China is very much dependent on petro imports. The US is gradually moving away from upholding the Bretton Woods accords which is going to have global implications for pretty much every nation in the Eastern Hemisphere, but even more so for China. For more on this: anything by Peter Zeihan (the intro to geopolitics that is the first half of his 2014 book is about the best I've read).

I would be beyond happy if there were no more wars, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime.