[HWR_14]

If Ukraine fights off Russia, then the chances of Russia invading a NATO country would fall to almost zero. It would also substantially reduce the chances that China invades Taiwan. Those would both be very expensive to the US. Much cheaper just to give Ukraine weapons.

[MichaelZuo]

Those are the upsides, what are the downsides if Ukraine still loses, or gets split up like Korea, anyways?

Is the net balance in favour of supplying weapons? This is the type of analysis I've not seen done yet across thousands of articles, essays, blog posts, etc...

[nradov]

Even if Ukraine ultimately loses some of their sovereign territory, supplying them with weapons is a cheap way to degrade Russian military capabilities with no risk to US forces or our NATO treaty allies. What we have spent on military aid to Ukraine is a tiny fraction of our overall military budget so for the USA there is really no downside. Regardless of who loses, we still win. Some people may be uncomfortable with putting it in such stark amoral terms but that is the geopolitical reality of how such decisions are made.

[stale2002]

The downsides that you mentioned increase if you don't supply them weapons.

Even if Ukraine loses with the weapons, it loses less hard than without them, and can push for a split, for example, instead of a full annexation.

[HWR_14]

I assume you mean downsides geopolitically, because the financial costs are sunk either way.

There are several losing states (complete annexation, split like Korea). However, there are only two main ways Ukraine can lose. The world can stop sending free weapons or even with free weapons Ukraine is defeated.

It's hard for me to think of any way that "the west stops sending weapons" is not more likely to result in Russian or Chinese aggression. Is China more emboldened by "US arms without US military personnel lost a war" or "the US can be counted on to lose interest in any conflict over 2 years"?

So it doesn't matter what the downsides are[0]. It seems like no matter what, the US is better off helping Ukraine.

[0] Unless Putin pushes the big red button. But that topic has been written about extensively.

[MichaelZuo]

It seems possible for the Russian decision makers to be so angered that they will want to take revenge, to spend their built up political/technological/social/cultural capital to intentionally weaken the US, EU, etc.

Nuclear weapons are practically an all-or-nothing proposition, but nowadays there a lot of other ways to deliver some intermediate amount of 'revenge'.

And it's a lot easier to destroy then create, as the war has shown, I estimate the asymmetry is easily 100 to 1. That is to say $1 of novichok, or whatever nasty means, can easily cause $100 worth of damage, and the combined economic size difference isn't even 20 to 1.

Though I'm just spitballing the numbers here.