So what is the US doing in Ukraine?

I suppose the short, accurate answer would be nothing really, except making occasional visits and watching Ukraine bleed out.

The US is not technically participating in Ukraine’s defense of itself against the most recent and heinous invasion of its territory by Russia. It is only providing assistance to that defense in the form of materiel, training, and occasional public comment against Putin and his country. And, of course, a boatload of sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian children are being stolen and turned against their own, and so many Ukrainians have fled their nation for their own safety.

I like the Ukrainians. They are, almost everyone would acknowledge, badass bravery incarnate. Badass bravery seems to be their natal spirit.

But…while no one can deny the heroics of their present, what about their future?

What is the point of the US’s stance toward Ukraine? What exactly are the Ukrainians to US leadership decision-making except proxy fighters in an unacknowledged war against a Russian Federation that is clearly an enemy of the US?

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are doing the hard and dirty work of trying to stem a tide of slow gray evil that wants to wash across Europe and then the entire world.

It is no secret that Putin hates the West. It may actually be that Putin hates everything, including himself, but he publicly hates anyone and anything that he perceives to be against him and the mythical Russia of his imagination. And NATO, he is quite sure, is enemy #1 of mythical Russia.

It’s a strange thing to live in a myth but Putin is certainly not alone these days in dwelling in a fantasy that has never existed and never will. Millions of Americans (Trump supporters I’m looking at you) live in their own fantasy worlds these days, and they probably share with Putin an overwhelming bitterness that in the real world not nearly enough people are telling them how great they are. There will never be enough myth to assuage their ferocious desire for something real to feel good about.

And while right-wing myth-making is clearly not good for Ukraine – what exactly would be good for Ukraine? I suppose the fantasy answer for Ukraine would be to smash Putin and his oligarchic cabal into a fine gray powder that they could then blow away into non-existence while singing celebratory songs and hopefully getting drunk off their brave and weary asses.

I wouldn’t mind that. There are a lot of evil things in the world I wouldn’t mind smashing into powder and blowing away while singing celebratory songs and getting drunk off my ass.

But if we leave fantasy behind ever so briefly, what’s the end-game for the West and for Ukraine? The US has a habit of involving itself in other folks’ conflicts with the idea that those conflicts pose a direct or indirect threat to the ‘American way of life.’ It also has a habit of being reactive and not ever establishing an articulated real goal for its involvement in those conflicts.

In my lifetime, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq come to mind. There somehow seems to be an American idea that once the US gets involved somehow it will ‘win’ and all the other parties involved will suddenly realize how great the American way really is, put down their arms and decide they are all Americans now. The American people have a history of getting pretty fed up when this strategy doesn’t pay off quickly.

That’s partly because there is no real ‘winning’ in a protracted war of attrition and ideological disparity. And the countries in which these proxy wars are waged pay the bill for the American fantasy.

Soft power, diplomacy, and economic might have worked better for the US, but they have their limits too. The overoptimism that everyone wants to be America deep down has bit the US butt more than once and will continue to.

So then – what? Maybe there’s no good answer. Clearly Ukraine wants our help and deserves it. Maybe no one on earth really understands these kinds of wars in which big countries take sides and drop bombs on smaller countries. The Republicans in the US are already pretty fed up with the war in Ukraine while enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon in the war between Israel and Hamas. It’s almost as if they haven’t learned a thing and don’t care to.

As far as Ukraine goes, the long-term betting money, I think, is on Ukraine, because the Ukrainians are so motivated and motivation seems to prevail in these things.

But maybe not entirely. The conventional wisdom seems to be that diplomacy will ultimately be necessary. But not before both sides are limping along wounded and exhausted. How exhausted and how wounded seems to be the underlying question.

Along with what will be the ‘final’ borders of the two nations. Does Russia get to expand its borders by force, at least to some extent? And if it does get to enlarge itself, will it not continue to try to do so by force for the foreseeable future?

Ah, humans! Their emotions, their ambitions, and their downright terrifying capacity to be, well, terrifying.

It seems that artificial intelligence is THE NEXT BIG THING in human life. Hey, AI – can you stop this war for us? Can you help Ukraine out? Can you put aside the ferocious egomania of nations and their leaders and lead us to some sort of practical solution? We sure could use it. Stop writing student papers and do something really useful for a change.

Sigh. That doesn’t seem to be happening.

So I guess I’ll go with the fantasy that Putin gets his ass handed to him and we can all stop worrying about his empire-building ambitions and worry about other things that will undoubtedly be just as dire.

But what about you? What do you think the US or NATO goal in Ukraine should be? And what strategy should be used to attain it? What’s your practical solution to the dilemma at hand?