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But international affairs is basically a Mafia scenario, and at the end of WWII we became the Godfather.

If we abandon that role, will the next Godfather be "better" for the world than we are? Who and Why? if you can answer that... and how will the next Godfather emerge and solidify that position? China doing it "peacefully?"

We tried the isolationist "whatever..." position and the result was Pearl Harbor and the hell that was WWII, and the devil's bargain that created the Soviet Empire in eastern Europe.

Also... you seem to miss the Russians constantly stating they will not stop with Ukraine. Pay more attention to their own statements as posted in this thread.

The international arena has no single overarching authority. This makes it relatively anarchical. Sometimes there are periods where a single state entity has a domination of power but they are usually short lived. The U.S. stepped into the role of hegemon at the end of WWII because the British Empire collapsed as a result of its participation in the conflict. The British entered the war in order to protect their relative power and in the end defeated the state they thought threatened their position as hegemonic power and then completely lost their geopolitical position as such as a result. The British Empire disintegrated as a result of the war. This should prove a significant warning for us but we typically don't see these lessons because of our simplistic narrative surrounding the World Wars.

The U.S. also had to fill this role because the Soviet Union became an existential threat to all of Western Civilization as a result of their massive ascent in power stemming from the Second World War. We actually helped to turn them into this fearsome beast. Another "unintended consequence" of warfare. Keep in mind that those seem to occur over and over. We fought to ostensibly eliminate a threat to Europe (though preservation of the power balance was the true motive) and created an even stronger threat that now occupied all the countries whose sovereignty was the casus belli for Britain's war entry.

If you think the United States can remain the single global hegemonic power into perpetuity you have an ignorance of history and common sense. Our Founders rightly warned against these ambitions. 1945-1991 provided a unique context in which actively partaking in this role was sensible for the United States and I think it can be argued that it was also quite harmful to our society in many ways as a result. The world has been multipolar for the vast majority of civilization and is currently so. If you think the United States should start intervening militarily and politically in other state's affairs merely to preserve our position as hegemonic power (or to maintain our current relative power position) then you are actually promoting a fundamental disrespect of the principle of national sovereignty and reciprocity and an imperialistic foreign policy. I don't believe this course to be particularly sound, moral, or sustainable and will lead to more war and chaos, including domestic.

And I unequivocally reject your premise that "isolationism" is what caused WWII or created the Soviet Empire and their control of half of Europe. I also reject the false premise that anything short of active U.S. involvement in global international conflicts that do not have a vital national interest to the United States constitutes "isolationism" but it sure is as popular as ever in its rhetorical usage to dismiss policy detractors.

And as for the Russians' true ambitions, how about instead of assuming they will invade NATO, we respond in the instance that they actually do invade NATO, instead of facilitating a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's kind of the whole point of the institution, no? You would think if this threat was so serious we would see levels of rearmament in Europe not seen since the late 1930's, but we don't. I also don't assume the Russians are irrational actors since war with NATO offers no path to victory for them and would put them at extreme risk of nuclear annihilation.