For anyone who'd like to read a longer post, here is the best I could do in a Timeline of Events:
1. NATO is created in 1949. Its stated purpose is to combat the Soviet threat.
2. NATO and American intelligence agencies consistently overestimate the strength of Soviet military forces from this point onward.
3. The same American and international bureaucrats, as well as defense contractors and other war manufactures that profit from full-on war also profit from increased NATO production in "response" to the overestimated Soviet military capabilities.
4. As the US emerges in primary military opposition to the Soviet Union, so too grow the contributions of the US to NATO when compared to other NATO members. (The proportion of total NATO spending by the US continues to rise past this point; as of 2021, the US spends 69% of all NATO spending at 811 billion dollars)
5. NATO becomes an extension of the US military bureaucracy.
6. The Soviet Union falls. (It was known to be falling since about 1988.)
7. Pressured by the US, now-Russia and Britain, Ukraine gives up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from these three countries. "In 1993, international relations theorist and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer published an article including his prediction that a Ukraine without any nuclear deterrent was likely to be subjected to aggression by Russia, but this was very much a minority view at the time." (Wikipedia)
8. Support among politicians for NATO and US military spending in Europe begins the wane without a Soviet threat. The US military-spending lobby turns its attention toward the Middle East for lucrative profits from the fall of the Soviet Union onward.
9. Support for NATO itself by American politicians begins to wane as conflicts shift toward the Middle East. NATO declares a new enemy, Russia, in order to justify its existence as the "North Atlantic" military organization.
10. American and NATO intelligence services highly estimate Russian military capabilities.
11. Tensions increase between NATO and Russia as NATO conducts drills near Russian borders; NATO's military presence in Eastern Europe (and American military-industrial production) increases to near-Cold War levels, and is maintained at these levels
12. Russia invades Crimea. NATO does very little to directly combat this, but soon reestablishes a larger Eastern presence and increases production via the success of US lobbying.
13. Russia invades Ukraine in 2022.
No more timeline: now for some predictions. As far as I can tell, this invasion is similar to the annexation of Crimea a few years back. Viewing geopolitics as a push-pull of complacency and aggression, I believe that the military response by the West will be similar to its response to Crimea in 2014.
It's important to keep in mind that a full takeover of Ukraine is not really the aim here; Ukraine has been an effective "buffer zone" between Russia and the West for years, and Russia's main concern geopolitically is large, direct borders with the West. Ukraine is in a similar position to North Korea; even though China could easily take over North Korea, it chooses not to because North Korea acts as an effective buffer between the extraordinary Western military presence in South Korea and mainland China.
In short, as long as smaller-scale conflict remains as lucrative as it has been to the military-industrial organizations of Russia and the US, we are unlikely to see some large escalation to full-blown war between the US and Russia, for example. An increase of conflict to that point would probably indicate diminishing returns for the military-industrial organizations, and the military-spending lobbies know this. Perhaps decreasing US spending in the Middle East indicates otherwise, but I don't have those numbers yet, and my best bet is that spending hasn't decreased enough there to change this analysis.
Thanks for reading! I spent way too much time on this post, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.