Russia’s raid against Kiev was both a low-probability stab at ending the war immediately, as well as a pinning maneuver that held a large Ukrainian force immobilized and covered Russia’s two other campaigns in the south and east. If the Russians had expected the Kiev column to work on its own, why would they have bothered with the other two prongs of their attack?

Conversely, if it gives a huge strategic advantage and there’s a chance it could end the whole war instantly, why not do it? (In fact, as we now know, if not for Boris Johnson personally visiting Zelensky and swearing that NATO would give everything to ensure a Ukrainian victory, a peace deal would have been signed in April 2022)

This way of thinking betrays an undialectical understanding of why actors act, where they do things for ‘a’ reason rather than because the set of reasons to do it outweighs the set of reasons not to do it. Then, if the action fails to achieve ‘the’ reason, it is a failure as a whole: the actor must be foolish or have made a mistake, and any advantage gained was an accident, or it’s even asserted that because of the apparent failure they cannot have gained any advantage! Western commentators are unable to go beyond this - frankly, they’re unable to grasp that their enemies act for reasons rather than just an innate urge to do evil - but it’s useless as a way of analysing the world, especially when it comes to questions such as why the US even started this war in the first place.

I’ve seen people argue that the US miscalculated, that the war has been a failure because neither the Ukrainian military nor the sanctions have put a dent in Russia’s performance, but actually destroying Russia and breaking it open for the neoliberals to feast on was only the most favorable possible outcome.

• Cutting Europe off from Eurasian economic integration and making them dependent on US gas imports is still a win for the Empire
• Laundering enormous amounts of money through Ukraine and back into US MIC stocks and (Democrat) politicians’ pockets is a win for a subset of high-ranking imperial ghouls
• Privatizing Ukrainian assets to pay for war debts and seizing control of land and state resources is a win for rentier megacorps like Blackrock
• Tightening security in the face of an external enemy and dipping their beaks in the pot of US arms spending - even as their real economies die off - is a win for the European suzerains

Even if the capital-R ‘Reason’ of destroying Russia had only a slim chance of success and, as we can see, has failed, the other reasons to start the war still far outweighed the reasons not to.