> If the US tried to force a negotiated cease fire, there is a real risk that Poland or the Baltic states become direct parties to the conflict.

Yeah, I think it is underappreciated how much of the present NATO approach (including US policy, but not exclusively that) has been about doing enough to reassure NATO’s eastern flank members who see this conflict as nearly as existential as it is for Ukraine, even if the threat to them is slightly more temporally distant, rather than the kind of relatively remote geopolitical influence game that some American (and probably even Western European) observers see it as. If – given the election results, we probably have to admit this has become a “when” – the US commitment falters, they will have a new calculus in trying to assure that Russia lacks either the means or the inclination to turn on them next…