Your big mistake is assuming the west thinks ukraine can militarily defeat russia. It doesnt. The purpose of the support for ukraine isnt to allow ukraine to win, but to humiliate russia and kill russians in the belief that this will result in regime change in moscow.
Ukrainian casualties are irrelevant to NATO.
Honestly, if the issue is to force regime change, there's no way that can happen without invading Russia proper.
Also, why not both? I think that the west is geopolitcally using this to weaken Russia and remove them as a threat, allowing them to focus on other theaters. But this ties into Ukraine winning and recovering its territories, if they only wanted to bleed Russia and weaken them they already did that several months ago, they wouldnt give offensive weapons and instead focus on defensive ones, keeping the Ukrainian state and military alive and cause Russia as many casualties as possible
Sure, i dont think NATO high command cares that much about Ukrainian casualties, but they care about the strategic theater. Allowing a substanial number of Ukrainian military asssets be surrounded without any clear benefit is clearly incredibly stupid strategically. Thats why i think that they have some sort of plan for Bakhmut, or that Zelensky simply disregarded their advice
Zelensky is just an attack dog. If the issue was to attack Russia , the mission would be for Ukraine to take control of all the disputed areas, and then just breathe down Putin's next and be the enemy at the gate. But right now, it looks like the issue is to keep Russia from making more gains so they have a way to reach Kiev, and possibly remove Zelensky.
And if NATO and its members didn't care that much about Ukraine, they'd just tell Zelensky "no" when he comes asking for more aid, particuarly more weaponry.
This begs the question "why"? Why is Russia such a threat to the West? Is it because its a threat to the Unipolar world order? If so, why?
Probably because there's folks in charge still in the Cold War in terms of how they see the world. If they were worried about communism, they'd be fighting China, but then they wouldn't be able to have access to cheap labor.
Any threat to the Unipolar order you speak of would probably be taken on more directly. What challenge is there, BRICS? As for the "why", all I've heard is that the US has forced its worldview on the world, more so than Germany and its Nazi Guilt, and if Russia can topple Ukraine as a NATO/US puppet, then it means that the world can have more than one power and America isn't the only country that can write the rules.
Funny enough, China is also trying to be that other world power that establishes order.
Why does the West believe unintended consequences, aka blowback, won't happen just because?
Because there hasn't really been much of a united front to take them on since WW2 or the Warsaw Pact. Even now, when Russia was sanctioned and shunned throughout the world, Russia is still pretty much dealing with the conflict by themselves in terms of the military, and all they've managed to do since the sanctions is an economic partnership and maybe some closer ties with CHina just to have a trade partner.
he West is being degraded and destabilized, not Russia.
Is this about how there's PTB destroying native cultures through migration and trying to create giant authoritarian welfare states out of some dystopia? And Russia is working to destroy TPTB? Because the only real destabilization has been the Conservatives in Great Britian who have seemed to not really get a Prime Minister to stick around from Cameron to Truss.
The West is losing, not making gains. At some point the West has to cut their losses if it wants to stay relevant.
Maybe this is just sunk cost fallacy then. Unless you believe that Ukraine is just some money laundering and major crime hotspot for powerful people so they have to keep Ukraine and the Zelensky regime alive lest Putin cause all the crimes to be revealed.
) or whatever. The money not coming back to Russia is unsurprising but if that is the case then it's just going to encourage other countries to re-think their policies in terms of where they keep their national funds. Although you never know, it's possible many countries are going to stay cuckmaxxed like Germany who took the destruction of Nordstream on the chin and didn't let out a peep.
