What does the West gain by not letting Russia swallow Ukraine?

Question

I sort of get the official reasons why the West did not just let Russia to just swallow Ukraine:

• Invading other countries and taking what's not yours is bad (even if some of it used to be yours in the past). Whoever attempts to do so needs to be stopped and educated, even if they have nukes.
• Not keeping your promises is bad. Again, whoever does so needs to be taught some good manners.
• The modern Ukraine is fresh, democratic, shining and promising. It would be a pity see it go down the maw of a big, rogue, filthy & totalitarian bully.

But. Let's just step back and see what would have happened if the West stayed absolutely neutral and did not support Ukraine at all. Imagine no military supplies, no money, no training/advice, nothing:

• Russia would have squashed Ukraine forces, removed Zelenskyy and put a puppet in his place (e.g. Yanukovych).
• Ukraine would have de-facto become just yet another part of Mordor Russia.
• There would have been virtually no civilian blood (comparing to how much has spilt by now).
• There would have been virtually no destruction of buildings/infrastructure.
• There would have been virtually no new influx of refugees.
• Europe would have continued buying Russian oil & gas. The prices would stay stable, no energy crisis would occur.
• The inflation would stay normal.

And, arguably, Russia wouldn't have continued invading further in Europe. Unlike Ukraine, that would have been a direct aggression against NATO: Russia may be blatantly impudent but not suicidal. Also, whereas trying to conquer Ukraine sort-of makes sense in the light of it being the common historical ancestor land, trying to get other parts of Europe wouldn't have that sort of "justification".

So, the above was the alternative scenario which by all means was available to the West, and I struggle to believe that the availability of it wasn't clear. No rocket science or quantum mechanics here.

Yet the West has chosen the costly and bloody option.

Was it really about standing on principle of what is right and what is wrong?

Somehow it seems way too naive to accept that as the real motive (no matter how I may personally agree with the principles).

Rather, wasn't the whole thing indeed just about leadership on this planet? Childish power game? Aiming to establish/maintain a single main leader nation/agenda/philosophy vs allowing multiple ones?

Answer 1

The thing with allowing forcible redefinitions of borders is that brings back a major motivation for wars, territorial expansion.

If on the other hand, conquered and annexed territories are not recognized as being part of the aggressor, and if territorial acquisition is counteracted on principle, we are left with a lot of other causes for the waging of wars, but not this one.

A second motivation is that the rest of Europe isn't particularly comfortable with a Russia that wants to re-impose its will upon its neighbors. Stopping it in Ukraine, by arming Ukraine, is cheaper and safer than stopping it elsewhere, in an EU/NATO country. This was for example answered here re. Poland's motivation in assisting Ukraine.

Third, from a realpolitik viewpoint, there is a real risk for the West in taking the easy way out, like they did in 2014. Not so much with Russia, which was already known to be a shadow of its Soviet predecessor, even before outdoing itself in mediocrity during this war. But with China which would have taken that as a sign of weakness and possibly moved in its own neighborhood (Taiwan, Spratleys, etc...). China has the potential to be a much more challenging opponent than Russia and losing Taiwan's, and indeed China's own, supply chains would be a much harder economic blow to the West.

Best to negotiate a compromise from a position of strength and resolve, not weakness and timidity.

Last, the suggested approach * was taken by Europe in 2014, keeping the peace at all costs. Yet, here we are in 2022, with the same needs-to-be-accommodated Putin. And no peace.

* the armaments given Ukraine pre-2022 weren't very numerous and mostly defensive in nature, ill-suited to invade. Ukraine was kept out of NATO. Ukraine presented no real threat to Russia.