I am not sure if Ukraine is the hill we should die on, for many reasons. But I DO believe Russia/Putin is becoming belligerent with their belief their new weapons make them superior in some useful way against us.
The Russians are a tough culture and people.
They/Putin only understand strength and despise weakness.
They WILL exploit any advantage they think they have, and the more they do, the more they believe they have advantage.
Deterrence only works if in the mind of your adversary you are strong.
-We should remove ourselves from the New Start Treaty and upload all our ICBMs and SLBMs to their normal warhead loadings.
-We should fully fund, and expand our nuclear deterrent renewal plans and warhead count significantly to at least match Russia. It DOES matter, to the Russians.
-We should adhere to all present treaties for now, like NATO, and not expand further east. If our NATO allies don’t step up to protect themselves within the NATO structure, then we need to re-examine our commitment. We can’t fight their wars, which are today existential, without at least their full support.
-We should approach Russia from a position of strength, and NOT weakness or any position of inferiority (thank you Obama) , and focus on increasing that position such that Russia isn’t so adventurous.
LOL. Why not start a nuclear war while you are at it?
Do you see the Russian deployments in the Western hemisphere? I don’t. The NATO deployments straight on the Russian border are real.