The US doesn't care about Ukraine as a country, or its people. Just as we don't care about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.
All the US cares about is maintaining global hegemony and dominating markets. Condoleeza Rice was talking about "addressing the problem" of Russian gas going to Germany already in 2008 or so. This war has been pushed by the US since at least then.
Getting out of this situation will not be easy, as since the coup in 2014 it has gone from diplomacy to civil war. This is progressing just as predicted by William Burns (former US ambassador to Russia and current CIA director), John Mearsheimer, Stephen F. Cohen and many other cold war Russia experts.
The correct path WAS one closer to what Obama espoused, to understand that Ukraine has never been an important ally for the US militarily or economically, and Russia will always have escalatory dominance there. That is the military reality we are seeing on the ground, at least those of us who watch independent / neutral analysis (as much as that exists anywhere).
The US and NATO have been escalating since Russia's invasion. Every escalation has lead to a short term gains followed by longer term losses. Stingers, Javelins, M777s, HIMARs (I think I'm forgetting a couple) were all going to "turn the tide." Each did provide short-term advantages and gains in territory. But they were all at a massive cost to men and equipment. Russia pulled back, assessed, changed tactics and neutralized the new "wonder weapons."
Ukraine is calling for weapons and equipment that will not even restore it to where it was on 24 February 2022. Who in their right mind thinks that after a year of experience for the Russians, 40% loss of electricity in Ukraine, 100k dead for Ukraine, and massive destruction of the country that bringing in a huge amount of disparate systems that the Ukrainians don't know is going to result in victory on the battlefield?
The US should be pressing Ukraine (and I fervently hope they are in the background) to negotiate with Russia for peace.
The US chose not to push Ukraine to support Minsk, so at this point the best Ukraine can hope for is the loss of the four oblasts that Russia has annexed and a DMZ.
I do not expect that is what will happen. As Julian Assange pointed out about Afghanistan 10+ years ago, the goal of the US is not a successful war, the goal of the US is an endless war. Our tax dollars moved to the US MIC.
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria are all countries where we decided unilaterally that the countries needed some "democracy." All we did was make things worse and kill 6,000,000 people along the way. Ukraine will be no different.
We'll continue pumping money to the US MIC until it becomes clear that Ukraine can't win. Then we'll ramp up (as we're doing already) tensions in Taiwan so that we can send weapons there.
