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It doesn't seem so hard to understand to me. Russia is openly defiant of the Western order and props up our military adversaries like North Korea, Syria and Iran. Even Turkey, ostensibly a NATO member, became a patron of Russian defense systems. Adding insult to injury, Western Europe voluntarily made themselves dependent on Russian energy and starved their own militaries of funding and capabilities necessary to pull their weight in furthering the US's foreign policy goals.
Now, Russia is isolated, its military has been revealed as an underperforming anachronism, its brand has suffered in the arms marketplace, the Russian energy link to Western Europe has been perhaps permanently severed, Europe is committing to nuclear energy and US LNG imports as fast as it can, Putin is facing domestic political troubles, NATO is expanding to include wealthy Nordic nations that have resisted membership for decades, China has distanced itself from Russia and is probably rethinking its ability to take Taiwan by force, Russia's ability to maintain its support of its military client states (e.g. Azerbaijan) is faltering, and all of this has been achieved with no more cost to the US than a few hundred billion dollars of military equipment and some intensive military consulting with Ukraine. Europeans will shiver through the winter and Ukraine's streets are red with blood, but those are other people's (and peoples') problems. Even if Putin uses nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely that he'd target US territory, it's an open question how effective they would be, and he'd open the door for a much firmer response that would further accelerate all of the above.
If you're an unsentimental partisan of US interests, what's not to like?
That doesn't seem like there's any material benefit except perhaps to LNG suppliers, am I missing anything?
The status quo already greatly favored the United States. Neither Russia nor China were posing any threat to American interests. If it's all about posturing and letting everyone know who's the big dog, I don't think anyone could have forecast with any certainty that Russia could be held off by Ukrainian forces. We'd just been defeated by the Taliban and to sink billions into Ukraine and be defeated there as well would further the idea that America isn't such a formidable opponent.
A prosperous Russia seems far better for Europe and the world than a Russia with serious fears of collapse. Mutually assured destruction doesn't work if one party's destruction is already a foregone conclusion. At that point you're relying on Putin to care about American lives, and why would he?
A collapsed Russia also greatly increases the likelihood that someone spirits away a nuclear weapon and later detonates in an American city.
If your best argument is that we were right for the wrong reasons, I'll take that any day of the week.
A prosperous Russia would have gone right back to reassembling the Warsaw Pact and threatening the West. A collaborative and friendly Russia hasn't been in the cards for at least the past couple of decades, and it's categorically better to have a weak geopolitical adversary than a strong one.
This very much depends on the manner of its collapse. Anyway, it proves too much. Was the fall of the USSR also lamentable for the same reason?
Kind of; the way the USSR was dismantled is a cause both of the Russian government being what it is now, and also of the territorial disputes with Ukraine that are ostensibly the reason for a war that has a [however small] chance of turning nuclear.
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The ever-present risk of nuclear escalation for middling gains. Russia has been inflated as a geopolitical enemy for decades; they were not a serious thorn in our side or a yoke holding us back before the war with Ukraine, and they won't be after, but maybe there's a big ol' fireball along the way and that'll suck.
Like, yeah, undeniably, this has weakened Russia. From where I'm standing Russia was already very weak compared to us.
I think the US foreign policy establishment is actually doing a pretty good job of threading the needle and avoiding the risk of nuclear escalation. It is possible that Putin will resort to a tactical nuke, but (1) I suspect it'll be less effective than the conventional wisdom has it, and may actually deflate some of the mystique around nuclear weapons and lower the odds that they're used in the future, (2) I'm sure we'll have a very sharp response but will avoid retaliating with nuclear weapons of our own, and if NATO is not directly kinetic on (actual) Russian territory and Ukraine constrains its kinetics only to military resources on Russian territory, then Russia will have every incentive not to use nukes outside of Ukraine, and (3) breaking the nuclear taboo will make it even harder for Russia to come back from its isolation even after this has all blown over.
Sure, a fireball in Ukraine would suck, and the mountains of rubble and shattered bones in Ukraine already sucks, but neither really damages US interests.
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