That's the wrong question. It assumes there is an upside. But the real question is: what is the downside of not defending Ukraine? and what is the downside of defending Ukraine? Because war doesn't really have an upside, it only has downsides.

> Because war doesn't really have an upside

Putin thinks there is an upside - It will deter west from integrating Ukraine into NATO. In a way this makes sense. West just don't want to deal with a Russian headache like this.

Except that that wasn't going to happen anyway... the desire was there on the Ukranian side but just as the EU did not want them to join NATO had already distanced themselves quite a bit.

You have touched one very important point that seems to be worrying the west a lot, measuring their actions by ROI

It entirely rests upon how much damage can be inflicted upon Putin's new (10-15 years old, but really just being birthed with this invasion), aggressively expansive Russian Empire.

If you say a lot, then the ROI can be very high.

Russia formally has a new Stalin, a new Tsar, whatever you want to title him with. And the world should act accordingly. Putin will have to kill a lot of people domestically from here on out if he's moving into Empire mode, because the situation will get messy very fast and there will be real domestic opposition and he'll strongly dislike that.

Russia is a leper again.

And besides this, we should be defending the new, fragile democracy in Ukraine, on a moral basis. They're our friends and they want our help.

This is missing the point, grossly.

I believe I understood the point. In spite of all the post-industrial service economy and outsourcing we hear about, my understanding is that the US military industrial complex is still quite domestic; built and maintained by US citizens in the US at great expense for reasons that must seem obvious these days.

But ROI is all I can see that actually drives the US these days - why do you think the phrase "run the government like a business" is so ingrained? Personally, I'd prefer to run the government like a government, but I'm just one voter out of what... 150 million or so?

Well, in that case we are in agreement, and you simply broke my sarcasm detector.

I would say it’s less sarcasm and more (millennial) cynicism sadly.

It seems like a valid point to me.

When your friend or relative comes back in a pine box, do you want to know it was just another bad decision with nothing good coming of that sacrifice?

That said, I think the US has options here. We don't need to "occupy" Ukraine as they have plenty of troops. What they need is air superiority.

We should consider establishing a no-fly zone around all of Ukraine (and maybe Crimea). The risk to American lives would be as minimal as possible while still severely restraining Russia's ability to wage war..