[dabigv13]

IMO the previous administration's policy was ill-advised because it did not articulate a plan for Ukraine to win. It became increasingly clear that no such plan existed, or if it did, it had failed. Confronted with that situation, no "new" plan was made. We just kept doing what we were doing and hoped that eventually Russia would quit. Hope is not a plan.

If it was entirely in your hands, and you wanted to give Ukraine the best possible chance of winning without materially increasing the chance of a nuclear response from Russia, what, specifically, would you recommend that the U. S. government / U. S. military do?

Well, the rub is the "materially increasing chance of nuclear response" bit. I think doing anything more than what was done could have increased that chance, though I think even if we sent US pilots and jets to establish a no-fly zone or something more directly interventionist, Russia at most would have set off a nuke elsewhere, rather than in Ukraine.

I would have been in favor of that, but I imagine it would be an big political loser to send US pilots into potential danger like that, so probably never a realistic possibility.

Sending jets and training pilots sooner would have helped somewhat but even so I think the war would still be ongoing in a pretty similar way even with that.

The US only has so much influence. If Putin wants to spend a lot of blood and treasure in an ideological war to restore the Russian empire, hard for us to dissuade him of that.

[dabigv13]

IMO the previous administration's policy was ill-advised because it did not articulate a plan for Ukraine to win. It became increasingly clear that no such plan existed, or if it did, it had failed. Confronted with that situation, no "new" plan was made. We just kept doing what we were doing and hoped that eventually Russia would quit. Hope is not a plan.

If it was entirely in your hands, and you wanted to give Ukraine the best possible chance of winning without materially increasing the chance of a nuclear response from Russia, what, specifically, would you recommend that the U. S. government / U. S. military do?

Well, the rub is the "materially increasing chance of nuclear response" bit. I think doing anything more than what was done could have increased that chance, though I think even if we sent US pilots and jets to establish a no-fly zone or something more directly interventionist, Russia at most would have set off a nuke elsewhere, rather than in Ukraine.

I would have been in favor of that, but I imagine it would be an big political loser to send US pilots into potential danger like that, so probably never a realistic possibility.

Sending jets and training pilots sooner would have helped somewhat but even so I think the war would still be ongoing in a pretty similar way even with that.

The US only has so much influence. If Putin wants to spend a lot of blood and treasure in an ideological war to restore the Russian empire, hard for us to dissuade him of that.