Actually, the majority of US involvement during the Cold War involved material aid. Most of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines) and Latin America received substantial sums of American aid to fight off their Communist insurgencies. Among the failed efforts that nonetheless stretched our adversaries' resources, we financed Angolan rebels against the ruling Soviet-aligned Angolan government, Tibetan insurgents against the Chinese, the contras against the Soviet-aligned Nicaraguan government.
One of the reasons the US Government has failed to endorse The Cold War Victory Medal is the fact they would need to acknowledge the 500 or so military men who died on various “missions” during the Cold War.
For the best part of two hundred years people have assumed Russia was washed up and would be a pushover in a war.
Ask Napoleon and Hitler how that worked out for them.
Russia has a nasty habit of turning round and handing out a god-awful smackdown to enemies who have pushed it too far. Trying to oxter the Crimea out of Russian hands would be an absolute red line and insanely foolish.
I don’t like Russia and I am certainly not one of the Putin fan-boys who pop up here regularly but any western intervention in the Ukraine would be a foolish, foolish mistake. If the Ukrainians are that insistent on holding on to Crimea let them fight for it themselves. The rest of us don’t have a dog in that fight.