Other stuff

[Ginger*]

One counter I would raise to your view is the behavior of Trump and Biden's parties vis a vis the war as it is ongoing now.
You lambast Biden for not taking or threatening to take a direct involvement and resorting to this current proxy status quo—but I think you take even our current, admittedly shamefully minimal, American aid for granted. Trump's own wing of the Republican Party has been repeatedly trying to erode the current flow of arms to Ukraine. And a lot of the right-wing populist media in the US has been steadily taking up the banner of some moronic isolationism.
We can try to be generous and split the individual Trump from his movement, but the cracks between messiah and congregation have already shown on other issues like vaccines, and Trump and his policy makers (see Mjmd's comment about yes-men) bent to the will of the populists.

[Mjmd]

For the sake of comparison. Biden evacuated American ships from the Black Sea right before the invasion, he evacuated American embassy from Kyiv right before the invasion, he told that America will not interfere militarily in case of invasion.
(Even if he had no plans to interfere, think: what could possible have been the purpose in saying it out loud?)

So again, they were trying to let Ukraine know. The fact they tried warning in public forum says something. I don't know if it was also an attempt to discredit any story the Russians came up with to justify (which 100% worked as most of the world acknowledges it wasn't justified).

So stating publicly the most obvious question is "what you going to do US". Could Biden have bluffed. Sure. But it makes us look real bad if Russia calls it and if we are pretty sure they are going in, it wouldn't be good to be called on it.

[Gavagai]

One counter I would raise to your view is the behavior of Trump and Biden's parties vis a vis the war as it is ongoing now.
You lambast Biden for not taking or threatening to take a direct involvement and resorting to this current proxy status quo—but I think you take even our current, admittedly shamefully minimal, American aid for granted. Trump's own wing of the Republican Party has been repeatedly trying to erode the current flow of arms to Ukraine. And a lot of the right-wing populist media in the US has been steadily taking up the banner of some moronic isolationism.
We can try to be generous and split the individual Trump from his movement, but the cracks between messiah and congregation have already shown on other issues like vaccines, and Trump and his policy makers (see Mjmd's comment about yes-men) bent to the will of the populists.

I can't say that I follow current American politics closely but from what I heard Democrats do this classic trick when they try to stuff Ukrainian aid bills with unrelated provisions that Republicans would not accept and then spin it as "Republicans refuse aid to Ukraine". Also, once again from what I heard, Republicans are mostly concerned with attaching controls to Ukrainian aid, not stopping it, which is a very reasonable idea. But I can be wrong about all that. I prefer to not make judgments about concrete policies unless I investigated them in detail personally.
I know nothing about what "right-wing populist media" says. And forgive me, but I learned not to trust anything I hear about a US political tribe if I hear it from their opponents.

[Gavagai]

For the sake of comparison. Biden evacuated American ships from the Black Sea right before the invasion, he evacuated American embassy from Kyiv right before the invasion, he told that America will not interfere militarily in case of invasion.
(Even if he had no plans to interfere, think: what could possible have been the purpose in saying it out loud?)

So again, they were trying to let Ukraine know. The fact they tried warning in public forum says something. I don't know if it was also an attempt to discredit any story the Russians came up with to justify (which 100% worked as most of the world acknowledges it wasn't justified).

So stating publicly the most obvious question is "what you going to do US". Could Biden have bluffed. Sure. But it makes us look real bad if Russia calls it and if we are pretty sure they are going in, it wouldn't be good to be called on it.

A big part of my complaints about Biden's pre-war behavior was that he behaved like a journalist, not like a leader of a superpower. I think our views on what constitutes effective foreign policy are too different for further conversation to be productive - at least, in that format. To be clear - I am saying it without any hard feelings or personal animosity. Thank you for your responses.

[superdeath]

Would be nice if we sent some tactical nukes to Ukraine juuuuuuust incase..

It is my believe that if it wasnt for Nukes, the USA quite possibly would have actually controlled a vast chunk of the world vs just having the ability to project that power. Wonder what kind of a world we would be in if we had nuked/gone to war with the soviets before they got their hands on the bomb.

[Gavagai]

For the sake of comparison. Biden evacuated American ships from the Black Sea right before the invasion, he evacuated American embassy from Kyiv right before the invasion, he told that America will not interfere militarily in case of invasion.
(Even if he had no plans to interfere, think: what could possible have been the purpose in saying it out loud?)

USA knew before the invasion that the invasion was happening without a doubt. Not sure what letting Americans die would accomplish here.

Anyway I can't take anything you say seriously if you think that making someone so incompetent, unhinged, selfish and evil as Trump the president of the most powerful country in the world is a good thing.

Putin is hysterically scared of the idea of a shooting war with USA, so if he thought there is even a slight chance that it would happen, he would have canceled the invasion. As a matter of fact, the simplest thing that would have stopped the invasion short would be Biden sending his vice-president to Kyiv and using her as a living shield until the Russians retreat.
About Trump's character - I think you are blinded by hatred and can't address this matter rationally, so our discussion would hardly be productive.

[Gavagai]

Would be nice if we sent some tactical nukes to Ukraine juuuuuuust incase..

It is my believe that if it wasnt for Nukes, the USA quite possibly would have actually controlled a vast chunk of the world vs just having the ability to project that power. Wonder what kind of a world we would be in if we had nuked/gone to war with the soviets before they got their hands on the bomb.

Ukraine actually had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They gave all the nukes to Russia because Russia, USA and UK gave them guarantees that they would protect Ukrainian independence.
I think this little factoid makes the behavior of all the parties involved (Russia primarily but also the two others) way more disgusting.

[Gavagai]

One counter I would raise to your view is the behavior of Trump and Biden's parties vis a vis the war as it is ongoing now.
You lambast Biden for not taking or threatening to take a direct involvement and resorting to this current proxy status quo—but I think you take even our current, admittedly shamefully minimal, American aid for granted. Trump's own wing of the Republican Party has been repeatedly trying to erode the current flow of arms to Ukraine. And a lot of the right-wing populist media in the US has been steadily taking up the banner of some moronic isolationism.
We can try to be generous and split the individual Trump from his movement, but the cracks between messiah and congregation have already shown on other issues like vaccines, and Trump and his policy makers (see Mjmd's comment about yes-men) bent to the will of the populists.

Sorry, I did not say the main thing in my previous response. I do not think Trump would help Ukraine more than Biden in the current circumstances. In fact, I would not be surprised if Trump helped Ukraine less. But I am certain Trump would not have allowed the war to happen in the first place because it was very easily preventable. As a matter of fact, Biden has chosen (under a fantastic assumption that this verb is even applicable to him) probably the only path that made the war possible and it is hard for me to believe that any other US President would be so stupid and short-sided.

[Mjmd]

Again your saying it was preventable by US bluffing that we are willing to send forces? Would we do so solo? Unlikely. So bluff bad. Would NATO have jumped in. I haven't heard strong support from NATO for said action, so also bluff bad. If an autocrat believes they can get away with something they will try. WWI the Kaiser was told by his advisors that Britain wouldn't jump in. He was FURIOUS after they declared, but the threat of Britain didn't stop him.

Also, assigning blame to anyone other than Putin is folly of the highest magnitude. You can say preventable by x,y, and z, but blame is not a word that can be ascribed anywhere but Putin.

[Gavagai]

Again your saying it was preventable by US bluffing that we are willing to send forces? 

I am not saying that, I am saying that if Biden didn't say that he would not send forces and maintained ambiguity it probably would be enough. At the very least, it certainly would not make things worse, there was no gain whatsoever in committing publicly to not sending forces but a very great deal of harm. This is, I think, the third or fourth time in this discussion when you attribute a very weird meaning to my words.
My predictions of Putin's behavior are grounded in long and careful observations, so I would rather trust them than a random analogy with WWI that happened between leaders of a different kind and under very different circumstances.