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Most of that money has been spend in the US and to replace old stocks of munition. I also guess that European countries (who have contributed together even more when including civilian support) are buying a lot of weapons from the US. The war also has shown that certain types of weapons are superior, the best kind of advertisement you can get, probably leading to additional sales of those weapons systems.

Next, Ukraine is not waste land, but an important source of grain that is feeding large parts of the world. If those would come under control of Russia, it would lead to a lot of political influence. Russia (and China) are already getting more and more control over countries in Africa. The greatest growth of population and wealth is taking place in Africa at the moment. If those markets are lost to the East it will have a negative impact on the economy of the US.

There must also a reason why the US is dragging this war on. The US in the past year has been very slow to deliver certain weapons systems (such as the F-16) and putting restrictions on the use of certain weapons systems (such as the restriction that military targets further away than 100 km (60 miles) from the border of Ukraine may not be hit). Although the F-16 is delivered by a coalition of European countries, the US had to give an export permit, and the US also has delayed the training of Ukrainian pilots. All these delays have permitted Russia to gain win on the battle field.

There are even people who believe that the US government does not want Ukraine to win, because the war is causing so much damage to the economy of Russia.

It's not just the money the US govt is spending in the US. The US and western military export industry is also getting a huge boost. Russia played a big part in exports before the war. The combination of needing to use their factories for the war in Ukraine and their equipment being demonstrably not great has decimated their export market.

> There are even people who believe that the US government does not want Ukraine to win, because the war is causing so much damage to the economy of Russia.

The US has absolutely, cynically, benefited from this war. It could have been stopped diplomatically, the US made no secret they believed Russia was preparing for an invasion. It was either calculated or pussyfooting, in my opinion.

> It could have been stopped diplomatically

no - you have no idea what you're talking about search for VVX post invasion speech on YT - it's about an hour long - in full - the insanity is clearly on display there

Yup. You would think it can be stopped by diplomacy in the West, while this only allows mr Putin to continue to expand, and "save us from nazis".

I did not mean negotiation. Diplomatically can be showing force but not using it. Like publically saying if Russia invades then The US and UK will close and defend the airspace as their commitment to the Budapest agreement, while moving some forces around the area. Russia wouldn't have dared if the west had made moves they believed.

moving troops to show decision/support is already not (well - just) diplomacy, though

otherwise yes - on all your points above, but the current rasha leader counted exactly on lack of all of those steps - similarly as before/after annexation of crimea

(and even after some limited physical display of western armed forces support would have happened that wouldn't have stopped him IMHO - this is based on extremely bad intel about overall mood towards invaders/occupiers of common ukrainians and his own mad delusion)

It could have been stopped diplomatically

By agreeing to Russia's demands for a "friendly" regime to be installed in Kyiv, and that Russia be allowed to annex whatever regions of Ukraine it set its fancy on.

Would you have been in favor of such a "solution"?

No, why would you assume that? I mean diplomatically like publically saying if Russia invades then The US and UK will close and defend the airspace as their commitment to the Budapest agreement, while moving some forces around the area. Russia wouldn't have dared if the west had made moves they believed.

Why would you assume that?

Because in the vast majority of cases, when someone posts some version of "The US/West could have prevented this war if they wanted to" (or "It could have ended with the March 2022 negotiations") that's exactly what they mean (territorial concessions), either tacitly or explicitly.

But of course I'll take your word that this wasn't the sense you were intending.

As to what you're now saying:

For one that doesn't like a diplomatic solution, but an overtly military one.

More importantly, the Budapest Memorandum doesn't establish that the US has any "commitments" to come to the aid of any of the 3 countries (BY, UA, KZ) should they come under attack (and Russia would never have signed it if it did). It merely asks that the signatory powers respect the newly established sovereign status of these countries; to refrain from using force or economic coercion against them; and to not nuke them, please. And that the signing powers will consult each other in situations that pertain to these commitments.

That's why the language was specifically chosen to read "Security Assurances" and not "Guarantees". The latter implies a commitment to some kind of a military response, like NATO's Article 5. But the former does not.

You can still maintain the position that the US/UK should have done something different in 2014 or 2022 -- but the simple fact is, there was no commitment expressed in the Budapest Memorandum which required them to do so. And this is probably the main reason they ultimately did not.

This, and a perfectly reasonable desire not to stumble into a direct and intrinsically risky confrontation with their main nuclear rival. Or a protracted / large-scale conflict of any kind with no clear signal of public support.

I know that the wording of the Budapest Memorandum didn't require a commitment but it could have been a basis for "you signed this and by breaking this agreement we have grounds for a defense". A defense pact could also have been made with Ukraine without them being made a NATO member.

> This, and a perfectly reasonable desire not to stumble into a direct and intrinsically risky confrontation with their main nuclear rival

But now the situation is worse, a hot proxy war. By making an agreement with Kiev before the war it would have been Russia who needed to avoid a confrontation.

> For one that doesn't like a diplomatic solution, but an overtly military one.

It might be closer to gunboat diplomacy, but rather that than the senseless loss of life we've had since then.

But now the situation is worse, a hot proxy war.

The thing is -- the response you're retroactively advocating here (aggressive brinkmanship) would have been by definition a major gamble. And it does seem that you're basically assuming that the "dice" would have turned up your way.

Whereas most likely the US/UK mindset was: "Yeah, it could go our way, if we went that route. Or it could trigger a nuclear escalation, either as an intentional response from their side -- or a purely accidental one. The odds for this are quite high -- at a bare minimum 10 percent, according to our analysts, though some say the risk is far higher."

The current situation has a recurring risk of escalation also, of course -- though objectively a far lower one.

I don't think they were thinking about a long-term proxy war at the time (as they generally thought Ukraine would be simply overrun if not defended). But we can be very sure they were thinking about the categorically more important issue of avoiding response that could trigger a nuclear escalation -- especially in very short term.

How could it have been stopped diplomatically? When Russia took Crimea in 2014, the western world include the USA did nothing except for some rather symbolic sanctions. Before the invasion of 2022, not a single threat was expressed. There was nothing of threat of a closed airspace. And even now there is non such things, while almost daily Russia throws heavy glide bombs civilian building and infrastructure killing civilians on a daily basis. International companies, including many from the USA, are still free to operate in Russia and serve the wealthy in Moscow. [1]

[1] https://leave-russia.org/staying-companies

Think about this: if Russia wins territory in the long term, it will be a first in 80 years. That is, the real reason why the Ukraine war is so important is Russia has violated the most important international rule, which is to invade another country seeking to annex their territory.

The last century or so has actually been pretty peaceful, and it has been precisely due to the world not tolerating this. If they succeed it will compromise that peace and I promise you everyone will suffer.

The best thing is for the whole world to have a defense-only pact, requiring everybody to band together and defeat any aggressor.

Fighting Russia in Ukraine is the alternative to fighting them in Poland and Estonia, then having to discuss who does the nuclear first strike.

(the US has also long ignored what Russia has been doing in Syria, despite that being a contributor to the middle east polycrisis)

Petty change to have the possibility to disrupt one of your biggest rival on the world stage without having to shed a single drop of american blood ? Looks to me Like a pretty good deal.

The Ukraine War though has been now transformed into an Afghanistan War. No end in sight, wasting a lot of money, and a distraction to important issues.

Also it has been empowering the opposition against the dollar. The US cannot support a 34 trillion dollar debt if fewer countries use the dollar.

> The Ukraine War though has been now transformed into an Afghanistan War. No end in sight, wasting a lot of money, and a distraction to important issues.

Indeed, the analogy is obvious. Just like the Afghanistan Wars were a waste of lives, money, and morale for its invaders —USSR (1979-89) & USA (2001-21)—, so is the Ukrainian War being the same kind of waste for the invading Russia (2014/2022-...).

We put the Ukrainian nationalists in power in 2014 and gave them a life purpose to hate Russia. The Russians lost their cool and invaded in 2022. They expected a quick resolution but we did not let the Ukrainians accept a truce on their terms.

Now the Ukrainians are disintegrating. We will never give them any billions of dollars to fix their country. We will dump them and it is Russia's problem now.

We are erasing any information that we instigated the 2014 events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

> without having to shed a single drop of american blood

And 10's of thousands of Ukrainian dead and wounded, lives and families destroyed, is a small price to pay for American hegemony.

Ah yes, because surely they wouldn't be dead or wounded if the US didn't send weapons their way. Remember the early days of the Russian invasion when Russian soldier raped and killed civilian and made mass graves ?

> The Ukrainians have actual Nazis.

The USA also has actual Nazis.

> But it isn’t my problem — tens of billions of American tax dollars are going to Ukraine with no accountability. In the U.S., open borders policies have led to the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl in Houston, along with many other high profile violent murders by illegal aliens who should have been blocked from entry and deported.

It is your problem, the destabilisation of the world by allowing countries to take over swaths of others' territories is going to be your problem, it's not immediate but will be your problem if it's not contained.

You know who else also rapes 12 years old? Your own citizens, inside their homes, their grandpas, their uncles, their dads, sometimes even their moms, those are the majority of cases of abuse of minors, not the boogeyman of immigrants.

The worst social malaise of the USA is this unbounded individualism, as if you do not care about others but just "me me me". It's just a stupid and infantile way of thinking, unfortunately it's so pervasive in your society that you lose sight of any bigger picture, what matters is "me me me" and that blocks any rational thought outside of the sphere of your small and broken egos.

The Ukrainians have actual Nazis.

It has its share of fashy types, but very few "actual Nazis" in fact.

Meanwhile the U.S., Canada, every European country, and Russia of course all have a solid contingent of the exact same kinds of folks -- probably in greater proportion than Ukraine.

And no, that isn’t “propaganda.”

It is a masterpiece of propaganda -- in the sense that the Nazi issue is wildly, ridiculously distorted and overblown as applies to Ukraine. And has precisely zero bearing on why the war came about and what should be done about it.

Yet for some reason, it's literally the very first item on your list when you think of why the U.S. should ditch Ukraine and let Putin have his merry way with it.