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Notes -
Because NATO has already said that they will strike back if a member of the block is attacked, and Ukraine is not a member of the block but the other potential targets are. Past commitments seem to matter in this whole international threats game; otherwise you could ask the same question about conventional intervention. Of course as far as NATO is concerned the problem in Ukraine is currently "solving itself", but consider the case of Georgia in 2008 - should the logic of "if NATO doesn't mount a conventional response now, why would Putin stop at that and not invade Estonia" have applied there too? NATO could have deployed a conventional force and successfully defended Georgia, just as it could have deployed a conventional force and successfully rolled the Russians back to their border all the way back in February, or crushed the People's Republics in 2014. They didn't, because it's understood to be advantageous to act consistently with your past announcements rather than being seen as opportunistically taking whatever measure is most locally advantageous to you. In this regime, talk would be worthless: a US that may opportunisticaly decide that Ukraine is under its collective-defense umbrella may just as well opportunistically decide that Poland isn't.
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