If we’re going to equate a sovereign country with Taiwan, it’s also worth noting the PRC has achieved more durable deterrence so far against both the US and any minority of Taiwanese who want independence with the threat of invasion than actually doing it. And conversely, US military buildup in the region has raised the stakes of and thereby delayed such a decision. The US has dumped similar amounts of military aid and sales on Taiwan the last several years as we had on Ukraine by the end of 2021. If Ukraine really is the same as Taiwan, Putin could have parked his armies on the border and plainly stated that admitting Ukraine to NATO would trigger an immediate regime change war. Obviously, it isn’t the same, because Ukraine is already a sovereign country and Moscow has its own hegemonic designs on the place beyond merely excluding the country from NATO.Though the same thought is not afforded to Russia. What did you expect was going to happen? Russia was going to back down?
I have yet to see any evidence the US strong-armed Ukraine into rejecting a peace deal they planned to accept, nor have I seen any articulation of how that was even supposed to have worked. The last iteration of these bad faith/betrayal accusations was that the US was unilaterally negotiating an end to the conflict with Russia behind closed doors. Critics of western policy should make up their mind about what the omnipotent invisible hand of America is trying to achieve here.