On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin unilaterally recognized two breakaway regions in Ukraine as independent states and indicated plans to send Russian “peacekeeping” troops to the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.

This is the latest and most significant escalation of the ongoing crisis between the Russian government and NATO over Ukraine.

In turn, the Biden administration and the European Union announced sanctions in response to these violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

The unfortunate development came just a day after the White House indicated President Joe Biden was open to the idea of meeting directly with Putin in the coming days.

As appalling as Putin’s actions are, we hope that President Biden continues to pursue diplomacy above all other considerations, and that he has learned from his mistakes as a senator who voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.

This editorial board will continue to urge against the use of military force and warn against hysterical rhetoric framing the conflict in Ukraine as an existential threat to the West or the United States. As this editorial board wrote last December, “Ukraine poses no vital security issue for the United States and it means far more to Russia than to us.”

Though the United States continues to posture as the policeman of the world, it is essential that we learn from the past two decades of perpetual war: a period when trillions of dollars were squandered, millions of people were forced to become refugees, hundreds of thousands of lives (or more) were lost and little was ultimately gained.

“We have significant concerns that new troop deployments, sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions, and a flood of hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal weapons will only raise tensions and increase the chance of miscalculation,” warned Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Barbara Lee of California last month. “Russia’s strategy is to inflame tensions; the United States and NATO must not play into this strategy.”

They’re right.

It remains to be seen whether a peaceful resolution is found, but absent an actual threat to U.S. national security, that is what Biden must solely pursue.