My take.... no American boots on the ground (unless they want to go join up of course). If Putin follows his Aleppo/Grozny pattern, he’s gonna start leveling cities. It’s starting to look like that his only play here, since his ground forces are proving to be lame while the Ukrainians are proving to be highly effective and highly motivated.
Putin cannot “lose” without being dethroned, plus he’s just plain brutal, so he’ll do anything. Once the true civilian carnage starts I fear it’s gonna be hard to keep NATO planes out of Ukrainian airspace; in point of fact, Ukraine ain’t Russia, it’s Ukraine, so Russia has zero claim to that airspace anyway, and I expect that’ll be the basic argument. Where it goes from there, IDK. Could get really dangerous from a nukes perspective.
Biden is not blameless here, nor is Trump, but in fairness I don’t think this has much to do with either incompetent old fart. It’s a big world, and people are gonna do what they are gonna do. It’s not our job to just knee-jerk send the troops in, nor should we IMHO. On the flipside, we Americans have reaped many rewards from “pax Americana” since WW2 and it’s in our geopolitical interest to do what we can to help a strategically vital country that CLEARLY wants to be free.
So, it’s a game of finding that balancing point where we do what we can but without ground troops. I will say, I’m glad there’s an adult in the WH who trusts and engages with the Pentagon & IC and listens to them. If ever there was one to handle by committee, it’s this one.
