How much US policy to Ukraine changed in thirty years

"Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred." 

President George H W Bush speaking to the Ukrainian parliament on 1 August 1991, trying to persuade Ukraine not to leave the Soviet Union. 

This is something I just read in John Lewis Gaddis' The Cold War.

William Safire called it the Chicken Kiev speech.

I remember I was disgusted by it and thought the USA should want the Soviet Union to break up. 

Bush the Elder was a much smaller and duller man than Reagan.  

Had Kissinger not dissuaded Gerald Ford from accepting Reagan's invitation to be his running mate in 1980 Bush wouldn't have been president and we'd have almost certainly been spared his disastrous son  as President. 

How much better that would have been for everybody.