Nearly thirty years ago, then-President George H.W. Bush stood in Kyiv, in front of an auditorium of Soviet officials struggling to revive a flailing Soviet Union. Here was a golden opportunity for an American president to carry a torch for the independence movements bubbling up from Ukraine to Georgia to Kyrgyzstan. Bush, instead, backed the apparatchiks in the room. Tossing cold water on all those pushing to escape the USSR, Bush hinted that those demanding independence were doing little more than peddling “suicidal nationalism.” The Soviet Union—and Bush’s burgeoning partnership with then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev—must remain. Ukraine’s independence could wait.

Independence, nevertheless, arrived for Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet Union’s republics. And in those decades since Bush’s infamous “Chicken Kiev” speech, Americans have, by and large, learned that steering these post-communist nation-states onto pro-democratic, pro-transparency, pro-independence paths is in our national interests. Supporting the fracture of the Soviet empire was correct—and protecting those gains have been worth every penny.

There have been slips along the way: The Clinton administration’s decision to back Russia’s brutal crackdown on Chechnya in the 1990s, which featured Bill Clinton bizarrely comparing Boris Yeltsin to Abraham Lincoln, comes to mind. More recently, good-time crime guy Paul Manafort reaped a king’s bounty buoying the most craven and homicidal actors in the entire region—a career that launched him to becoming Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, and, from there, straight to prison.

Nevertheless, Americans have worked to foster the democratic dreams of those nations which emerged from the shadow of the Soviet Union, eradicating corruption, encouraging civil society, and ensuring stability as they went.

And then, a year ago, Rudy Giuliani showed up. His gadabout meddling has already done damage to hard-won gains. Years of progress made in smothering corruption, encouraging democracy, and combating Russian revanchism could all go up in smoke—all because Giuliani’s ghoulishness knows no depths, and his unalloyed illiberalism just so happens to benefit a president willing to go to unprecedented, and unsettling, lengths to assure re-election.