> For Russia, this entire conflict is about halting NATO expansion and closing those gaps.
Invading a country that was getting NATO membership kicked down the road in a way which convinced both NATO and Western-leaning non-NATO countries that the Russian threat and need for a strong alliance was much greater than had previously been understood seems likely that it will turn out, in retrospect, to have done exactly the opposite of the first part, and doesn’t seem likely to help with the second, either.
But, in any case, I think you are wrong and making the mistake of doing nation-as-person analysis when the real reason for the war are much more person-as-person than nation-as-person. This was about quick, easy win to shore show Putin’s virility, in much the same way as the 2014 invasion of Crimea was; the difference is that in this case, Putin had had smoke blown up his ass by both Russian and Russia-friendly Ukrainian sources, who had painted him a picture (perhaps because they thought its what he wanted to hear, perhaps because of their own agendas, probably a mix of both) that the situation was much more ripe for it than it was, and the higher the cost, the less room there is for an exit short of total victory (beyond even the unrealistic goals that were the initial plan) without an appearance of catastrophic weakness. The war isn’t about what Russia needs strategically, its about what Putin needs personally.
> For the United States, this conflict is about sticking to a long-held neoliberal/neoconservative plan to replace all governments with Western-style democracies.
No, its not (and that’s just neoconservative, not neoliberal, anyhow: neoliberalism is an international economic ideology which is concerned with how nations trade and, rather pointedly – and a key way it was distinguished from the more general sense of liberalism at the time the term was popularized – unconcerned with the structure of their governments beyond their participation in markets.)
> If the American public does not start paying attention to what’s going on, it is possible that the conflict there will escalate to a hot war that will engulf all of eastern Europe.
It is a hot war involving several countries around Russia, it has been for well over a decade; arresting it before it expands or winning it should it expand is the NATO objective, and the eastern flank members of NATO have been the most aggressive about it because they are most threatened by expansion. Failing to recognize that is a sign that certain American people have not been paying attention.
> The likely response from the United States at that point will be to pull the plug on the entire war effort
The military purpose is obvious, but the political purpose of the eight NATO multinational battlegroups forward deployed in Eastern Europe, and particular of the fact that each of the three nuclear powers in NATO anchors one of them, is to provide certainty to both other NATO members and hostile powers that that will not be, from any of the NATO nuclear powers, the response to an attack on Eastern Europe, whether conventional or nuclear.
> Please don’t downvote me; I am not a propagandist for any side.
And, yet, your characterization of Russian motivations, US motivations, and the likely future progression are all straight out of Russian propaganda.