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Tangent, but – it's not merely a question of production; the war has also revealed that Russian technology is able to adequately counter ours (usually, it seems, after an adjustment period). For instance, the Russians shot down our in-service anti-radiation missiles! That was perhaps predictable before the war, but I still think it's a BIG DEAL because US/NATO air superiority doctrine is premised around being able to destroy enemy SAM launchers with (among other weapons) anti-radiation missiles, and the Ruskies just...shot them down with the air defenses they were supposed to be targeting. And that's just one example of their ability to adopt to our drip-feeding them our most modern (surface) weapons systems at an inoculatory rate.
This really gets my goat since in a real no-holds-barred war with NATO where the first two weeks might be determinate, if it takes the Russians two weeks to adjust to our tactics, their ability to adjust eventually is no big deal. But if we give them that month to adjust now, they'll be better prepared if there's ACTUALLY a confrontation with NATO. And presumably so will Iran and China. (The one upside is that this knife cuts both ways; the West has a much better picture of Russian capabilities now.)
If you see the war as a way to manipulate NATO countries to US interests by ensuring they are weak and dependent on US military aid so that they do not develop their own, independent military and the foreign policy that is downstream from that, 'we' (the US) absolutely don't need to do either of these things. Letting Ukraine bleed dry and letting Putin station a massive, battle-hardened army rebuilt with modern technology on the Polish border is, from a certain point of view, a massive win for US foreign policy.
Whether or not that's actually the US goal here I obviously can't say but I can't help but notice that everything 'we' (the US) has done seems to be nudging things in that direction.
Nah, I don't believe that either side was that smart. The Russians thought they could drive into Kiev in a matter of weeks (which seemed to be what Western analysts also thought at the start of the war). Then Ukraine proved a lot more resolute than anyone expected. So then the US alliance showed up with hundreds of billions worth of high-tech military gear, and everyone thought that would be the end of the war as "orcs" led "human wave assaults" against our most expensive weapon systems. Turns out that didn't work so well either, like you said- they were able to find ways to, eventually, find ways to adapt and counter our weapons. So now we're stuck in this meatgrinder that no one ever wanted or expected, but it's a sunk cost and both sides still want to win.
On the one hand, I'm inclined to believe you! Everyone overestimates government competence.
On the other hand, here's some excerpts from a 2019 RAND report:
Obviously RAND hedges their bets here, and I don't mean to claim that they were clairvoyant, or anything. But while Western analysts underestimated Ukrainian resolve, RAND was able to correctly point out the very serious downsides to sending Ukraine more weapons well before the escalation of the conflict. And then...we sent them more weapons...and the war escalated exactly as RAND predicted it could.
Now, supposing that you are a member of the US diplomatic-security apparatus that is concerned about Russian strength (and, let's say, sharing the common belief that Ukraine will not stand up to Russian might), but also nursing the unspoken (but very defensible) belief that a united Europe with an independent foreign policy is more of a threat to the United States over the long term than Russia will ever be. Just going off of this report, all of the things that RAND outlines as "risks" might look to you like "benefits," since you suspect that Russia invading and annexing more of Ukraine will "spook" Europe and increase diplomatic pressure on Germany to stop placing nice with Russia. Now increasing military aid looks like a win-win: you either weaken Russia or you spook Europe and with any luck you manage to thread the needle and do both by making the Russians look boorish and violent without them actually committing. And, as a strategist, an option where the worst plausible scenario has hidden benefits is a good option.
Things, in this postulation, DON'T go to plan: you're not omni-competent, the needle isn't threaded, Putin actually invades instead of just suffering from the weapons you've been shipping to Ukraine. How do you spin that situation?
I think what we've seen out of DC is consonant with that – pressuring Europe to give away their arsenal to Ukraine and buy American-made weapons systems instead.
Now, to your point, I don't even know that it requires the level of conscious thought I've put into it, just a sort of self-advantage-maximalizing sensibility, to get the most for the least. Maybe there's no grand strategy, just a sort of shrewd subconscious impulse. But I do find it very interesting that the "US diplomatic and military failure" DOES seem to have turned out in a way to have maximized US leverage over Europe and weakened them considerably. We replaced reliance on Russia for natural gas with reliance on the United States. We persuaded our NATO allies to give away, what, 500 tanks (many in service) while we have a few thousand Abrams in storage, of which we sent...1% (31). (Incidentally, I believe the reason given for not using more Abrams was that the logistics tail was too long. And while I do believe the logistics tail would be long, if we take this at face value it seems to suggest that we wouldn't be able to support Abrams in Europe during a conflict with Russia, which seems...problematic if true!)
So while I'm very uncertain as to how much of what has developed was planned, and I definitely agree that neither side was smart enough to correctly foresee the exact twists and turns of all these events, the extent to which it's undercut Europe to the benefit of the US is worth asking questions about, I think, but I rarely see it discussed.
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