The military funded think tank that prescribed all of our actions leading up to this point and accurately predicted Russia's responses disagrees with you.
No one wants direct nuclear war, but they do want to skirt around the edges and expand their power. The US has been in multiple hot proxy wars with Russia, the biggest being the attempted overthrow of Syria.
US leadership from both parties have publicly described Ukraine as a proxy war between the US and Russia. If you're still in the early days of the propaganda where Russia invaded Ukraine totally out of the blue with zero provocation from anyone and the US is just doing their best to protect the innocents, you're way behind.