Bingo. Unfortunately NATO made it very clear to everyone over the past eight years that it's not going to spill blood over Ukraine.
... But now that the opportunity to trap Putin in a quagmire has presented itself, it does seem to be ready to flood the region with weapons. Had it done so at any point in the preceding eight years, war might well have been avoided.
Which leads me to think that avoiding war was never the goal.
I think it's a bit of a catch-22: given one of Putin's stated aims is to demilitarise Ukraine and remove Western weapons, NATO arming Ukraine earlier would have caused Russia to invade earlier.
Invasions take a lot of preparation. You can't just tell your army to attack some country - they need to plan exactly how they will do it, and practice.
The turnaround time on this sort of thing does not favor the aggressor.
... But now that the opportunity to trap Putin in a quagmire has presented itself, it does seem to be ready to flood the region with weapons. Had it done so at any point in the preceding eight years, war might well have been avoided.
Which leads me to think that avoiding war was never the goal.