Yes, had NATO rebuffed Russia’s lies about its peaceful intentions in the region and its protestations of the destabilizing effect of extending MAPs to Ukraine and Georgia and extended both countries MAPs and interim security guarantees in 2008, the sequence of Russia-initiated wars that began immediately after they succeeded in tricking NATO would not have occurred. That is eminently clear in retrospect; Russia was trying to buy breathing room for intervention, and succeeded.

To be fair, that was far from clear prospectively at the time; it wasn’t like Hitler overtly seeking the Sudetenland after the Anschluss: aggressive expansionism hadn’t been telegraphed, and it wasn’t a “give them a bit, and they won’t take more” situation. The people who made the wrong choices in 2008 weren’t in the position as the people arguing for appeasement today, despite the last 15 years of history.