Somehow the Pentagon can shove money around easily enough to find an unanticipated $10B to build a wall at the Mexico border but can’t find money to ship tanks to Ukraine? I don’t think so. I think it’s mostly not wanted to get sucked into a foreign war, even or especially through the back door. FDR wrestled with this sort of problem in 1940 before coming up with Lend/Lease. It was difficult to give enough aid, but not so much as to provoke a war for which the US was woefully unprepared.
[My iPad hates this site, so I’m unable to scroll up to quote, but… someone upthread talked about tactics so…]
My guess is that the best guess is to look at Russian historical tactics and Russian thinking in general. Like US in Vietnam, like Russian and the US in Afghanistan [excepting the first couple months] we have massed armies ready to duke it out.
Ukraine is big enough to last, maybe not big enough to win the “all our tanks against all your tanks” kind of tactics. I’d say it’ll be “modified hit-and-run” with tank battles but not great battlefields full of them. Exhaust the Russians, which will be difficult given State control of their media, but even already there are signs that the population isn’t believing the “quick win” propaganda anymore, and the reservist call-ups are deeply unpopular.
Changing Putin’s mind is probably a non-starter, but maybe he dies or gets replaced, if Ukraine can last that long they will ultimately win.