If Russia is willing to fight a war over Ukraine, then you've got to ask yourself how important is Ukraine to us? Keeping in mind that this war could easily spiral out of control and into a nuclear Holocaust, killing approximately 5 billion (!!) people (this estimate was only recently computed, I think I even read about it on HN).
For me the answer is "Not very." I hope the Ukrainians win, but if they don't I won't lose any sleep over it. All this talk that this war being an existential threat to the West wold and that we must win it at all cost is simply preposterous.
Sure, I understand that response. Tomorrow the question will be "how important is Poland to us, really?", and the day after that it will be asked about Germany and France. And it's quite reasonable to always answer "well, I don't really care about country X so much that I'm willing to kill 5bn people over its independence".
But you will either end up with the whole world living as Russia's slaves, or you'll end up with a war when someone says "no, I'm not okay with that". Only that you'll have given Russia a lot of infrastructure to steal and re-use when that day finally comes.
For me the answer is "Not very." I hope the Ukrainians win, but if they don't I won't lose any sleep over it. All this talk that this war being an existential threat to the West wold and that we must win it at all cost is simply preposterous.