Given Ukraine has now been invaded multiple times by Russia it seems entirely right and reasonable for it to ask for guarantees, and not an imposition if the other nation was truly an Ally, in the formal definition of the word, no?
it seems like a huge imposition to ask someone to kick off a great power war that would likely leave millions of her children dead, yes. that's true in any case, but especially when one's entire geopolitical relevance is as a border state. not all alliances are or must be "we will do literally anything possible to protect your territorial integrity". it probably wouldn't make sense for us to make such an alliance since our territorial integrity hasn't been threatened in substance since the war of 1812. and because such an alliance would be a charity program where we give away young American lives to enable one political entity, rather than another, to govern scraps of low-value land an ocean and a continent away.
the whole "sending ukraine materiel is going to cause WWIII" thing is sort of bs russian propaganda. the idea that direct American military intervention isn't risking that is very much not.
again, how many Americans do you think it's appropriate for their own government to sign up to die for this cause? i think the number is zero. if you think it's higher, i'd very much like to understand why and how many you think is a reasonable number. i understand it'd be a ballpark figure, not a bright line, but i'd like at least an order of magnitude grasp of what people think is appropriate and why they think so.
By your own admission a defensive security guarantee will "kick off a great power war..." which is a way of saying Russia can't be trusted to keep the peace, no? Not that I disagree but I'm not sure it's as strong an argument against Ukraine's request as you think it is. It may have even been part of Neville Chamberlain's notes on the subject.
the chamberlain/weimar comparison is inaccurate for this case. germany was an ascendant power; russia is a crippled one. the war was actually a great investment because it's decimated russia's military population and stores of materiel and cut her off from the world enough to severely damage her economy. it will take substantial time for her to rebuild.
you can make a "what about czechoslovakia/poland/nazis" argument about heavy intervention in what would otherwise be any proxy war. you say czechoslovakia, i say vietnam, i say korea, i say the middle east.
the American interest in this war isn't so much "we love the ukraine" as "this is an effective way to cripple russia for the next decade by proxy". by doing so, we avoid that situation in a much smarter way than chamberlain. and because russia wasn't in that great of a spot to start with, a protracted war of attrition is really bad for her.
are you suggesting we should begin a war against russia, historically a massively losing proposition, over a couple oblasts of the ukraine? again, how many americans should we send off to die? how much should we weaken our resources for a much more concerning conflict with china?
