I don’t want the U.S. to bear the cost (in money and lives) of a war that doesn’t directly relate to protecting the american homeland. I think U.S. foreign policy has been a failure since the 1950s—we shouldn’t have gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, etc. The only justifiable war in that time, in my opinion, was Afghanistan, where the Taliban harbored terrorists that had attacked the U.S.
I think the premise of a “rules based international order” and democracy promotion hurts Americans. In Iraq and Syria it led us to overthrow dictators who were brutal to their own people and threatened their neighbors, but who suppressed terrorists that could attack the U.S. It also causes tremendous collateral damage (millions of dead civilians). While I acknowledge that Ukraine presents less risk of those things, to me it’s a test case. If we can’t resist involvement in Ukraine, there is little hope of turning the ship around on American imperialism generally. The next Iraq War will also be billed as a just war.
As of mid 2024, 2/3 of americans opposed sending US troops to Ukraine: https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/ame....
I acknowledge that a security guarantee wouldn’t start with boots on the ground. But there is a historical pattern of deepening involvement where we start out with something like a security guarantee, and that becomes the rope around our ankle that drags us into putting boots on the ground.