Chris

J.F. is trapped in a great powers mindset, pretty much like Russia itself. Minor states have no agency, they are only allowed to be pawns on someone else’s chessboard. The idea that the strategic interests of sovereign democracies might coincide and align just doesn’t compute.

In reality, the pattern of military training and equipping undertaken by Western nations between the 2014 and 2022 invasions shows pretty clearly that the USA/NATO/Collective West had no intentions of trying to destroy the Russian army if/when it tried to overrun Ukraine. The AFU was trained and equipped to fight an insurgency against a presumed Russian puppet regime. To the extent that Great Power Politics were at play, they were aimed at keeping Russia off balance, and no more.

Western nations have only moved to supply and train Ukraine with heavy weapons as it has become clear that Ukraine has the will and the capacity to fight. Notably, they are still not supplying Ukraine with systems that might *actually* destroy the Russian military (ATACMS long range artillery rockets, F-16 fighters, anything that can reach a significant distance into Russia itself and start taking out airfields and other strategic assets). Aid is confined to that necessary to push Russia back to the Feb 2022 ceasefire lines, while admitting the possibility that Ukraine may wish to go further, into the eastern Donbas and Crimea.

There is a happy strategic realignment in that Ukraine wishes to continue to exist and America would like to see Russia dissuaded from creating mischief in the west, leaving America free to think about China. However, if Putin were to order his forces out of Ukraine, the war would end there and then. It is Putin who is sending Russian people and equipment to destruction, not Joe Biden.