Churchill deliberately courted the Russians and prevented attacks on them early on in WWII to make it easier for them to switch sides, a very successful tactic which won WWII at the cost of Russian lives.
I’m one of those people who see China as a bigger threat to western hegemony and instead of using Ukraine to give Russia a bloody nose we should have again fermented divisions between Russia and China. It would have been possible to admit Russia into NATO, I know it sounds ridiculous but Switzerland was formed out of a having the bully canton join the alliance of smaller cantons that was expressly formed to defend against it. It can be done and there was historical precedent. Not anymore, China and Russia are now so joined at the hip they might as well be considered a single entity. I think the west overestimated its strength, and even now with the posturing for WWIII with fancy and expensive weapons it appears that the West doesn’t understand that warfare has forever changed. I did hope the Houthi conflict would have woken people up to that reality but somehow we’re holding on to this notion that a WWIII is winnable.
I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway. I much prefer the Chinese way of fighting with ‘high tech overproduction’ and wish we could ‘fight back’ with our own overproduction. We would all be far wealthier for it, especially since the alternative is massively destructive.
On top of that, China has its own problems--demographic and economic. Russia cannot help China solve them so China is happy to see Russia bleed and slowly descend into the inevitable chaos once the Russian economy collapses. Xi will be happy to carve out a part of Russia for himself once an opportunity presents itself. Although how much more of a really backwards population and barren land he needs is a open question.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/lenin-and-the...
Churchill was too late "Its (Munichs appeasement) reverse side was an unwillingness to cooperate with the USSR against Nazi Germany"
They prefered Hitler to Stalin.
"Winston Churchill, then a backbench Tory MP, insisted that without an alliance with the USSR, France and Britain could not help their allies or would-be allies in Eastern Europe"
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Fiasco_The_Anglo-Franco-...
Your reading of what's driving Western support for Ukraine is completely wrong here. They're not simply doing it to "give Russia a bloody nose" for its own sake. They certainly don't mind if that's what Russia gets out of it. But that's not the key objective in itself.
On the flip side: "fermenting divisions between Russia and China" is just fantasy, as at the moment U.S. is really quite inept in regard to such influence. It has no clue how to do that effectively (and any efforts it did take in that direction would most likely be moot and/or backfire).
I should note that I lament the cost of these conflicts to human lives on both sides and wish smarter populations governed by astute politicians would have found ways to successfully avoid war, perhaps at the cost of a multipolar world which we’re likely to get anyway.
Okay, multipolar world, whatever.
But what it really comes down to is this: the only way to have "avoided war" (after 2014) would have been to simply give Russia what it wanted -- recognized sovereignty over significant chunks of territory (most likely at least as much as it's sitting on now), combined with permanent limits on Ukraine's own sovereignty (in terms of its ability to enter treaties).
If you think this would have been (or still would be) an astute course of action -- you might as well come out an say so.
It was mutual, by the way. Stalin (or one of his generals?) said "even with the devil you may walk to the end of the bridge". That is, to them the west was the devil, and they were using the west just like the west was using them.
