The military funded think tank that prescribed all of our actions leading up to this point and accurately predicted Russia's responses disagrees with you.
No one wants direct nuclear war, but they do want to skirt around the edges and expand their power. The US has been in multiple hot proxy wars with Russia, the biggest being the attempted overthrow of Syria.
US leadership from both parties have publicly described Ukraine as a proxy war between the US and Russia. If you're still in the early days of the propaganda where Russia invaded Ukraine totally out of the blue with zero provocation from anyone and the US is just doing their best to protect the innocents, you're way behind.
If we return to where the war started, how did Ukraine first provoke Russia - by hoping to join EU, by existing? Ukraine could have been another non-allied country, but Russia escalated.
Regarding the role of the US and NATO in the conflict: "The interim Yatseniuk Government which came to power initially said, with reference to the country's non-aligned status, that it had no plans to join NATO. However, following the Russian military invasion in Ukraine and parliamentary elections in October 2014, the new government made joining NATO a priority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations
Russia didn't invade Ukraine "out of the blue". Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2014, when it occupied and annexed Crimea, and at the same time orchestrated and instigated covert War in Donbas.
You ramble something incoherent about the RAND paper from 2019. Just to clarify this: yes, it is precisely where the defense research should have spent the money following the Russia's aggression.
No one wants direct nuclear war, but they do want to skirt around the edges and expand their power. The US has been in multiple hot proxy wars with Russia, the biggest being the attempted overthrow of Syria.
US leadership from both parties have publicly described Ukraine as a proxy war between the US and Russia. If you're still in the early days of the propaganda where Russia invaded Ukraine totally out of the blue with zero provocation from anyone and the US is just doing their best to protect the innocents, you're way behind.