MTF
Full Member
The US especially, and France/UK to a slightly lesser degree, are status quo powers. They designed this world order after the end of WWII, and for Eastern Europe specifically got a re-design after the demise of the USSR. In this order Ukraine was supposed to have sovereignty. Their strategic play overall is just to keep the order. It's uninspiring but its what you do when you're a status quo power.And even if they were in a position to do something. What are the actual strategic benefits?
I think because Ukraine means much more to Russia than it does to NATO, Russia will ultimately take this round. But even a status quo power does have to decide at what point they will commit force merely to keep the existing order, again as uninspiring and seemingly not beneficial it seems.
Also put another way, if this for some reason were a smaller non-nuclear state instead of Russia threatening a country not in NATO/any other alliance, then the US would react more forcefully even if the benefit is nothing more than just keeping status quo, because the costs to them would be much lower.