I have misgivings about how this war will end. In 2015 I wrote a blog article, Why We Go TO War, and have now reread the article in trying to make sense of how we are being dragged into a proxy war with Russia. Part of the problem is that we are indeed the "world's savior of democracy", so whenever a war comes up, somehow it comes knocking at our gates. In 2017 when we were dragged into World War I, our standing army of soldiers and reserves was only 200,000 compared to Germany's 4,500,000, France's 4,017,000 and Russia's 5,971,000. After that experience we became a world super-power, despite our good intentions to stay out of wars.
From my article: "The reasons for war are highly varied and include rational and irrational actors, bargaining failures, religious ideology, anger and revenge, ethnic cleansing and other ideological mass killings, lack of commitment to agreements, preemptive and preventive wars, the worldviews of the decision-makers versus the populace, political events such as reelections, and what they term ”endogenous power” that the “probability of war depends on prior investments in arms, and that in turn the incentives to arm depend on how arms affect future incentives to go to war or to bargain.”
In 2015 when I wrote the article, we were engaged in Obama's "Operation Inherent Resolve" against ISIL, which really was just a continuation of Bush's war against Syria, backed by Russia, and Bush's "shock and awe" war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Over the last several decades, we have evolved into a manufacturer and exporter of high-tech weaponry, and with our vast arsenal of weapons and Russia's vast arsenal of weapons, it was only a matter of time before those weapons would be destined to be tested against one another. It is good for corporate America...the military contractors.
Making the world safe for democracy is a "feel good" philosophy that can always cloud our thinking. Is it that far different from Hermann Goering's “All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country”?
Anyway, in frustration, I understand and agree with Biden's policies supporting Ukraine in what amounts to now a proxy war against Putin's Russia. If we were dealing with a rational actor, diplomacy might have worked. Putin is not a rational actor. He doesn't listen to anyone. So getting involved in the war was inevitable. It was easy.
"Armies for the preservation of peace do not exist; they exist only for the triumphant exertion of war." -- Adolph Hitler