Biden’s military advisers were right that Ukraine probably should have sued for peace in the weeks after its initial successful counteroffensive, pushing back Russian forces from their march toward Kyiv.

But now we’re in the real mess I warned about. Investing the credibility of the whole motherflipping world order and the cause of democracy itself in Ukraine’s nationalist struggle always had moral hazards, such as the fact that Ukraine would likely become far less liberal under the pressure of war, or that its nationalist excesses at home would make us look like moral hypocrites.

But now we’re at the level of macabre farce. Told by the experts that we cannot back down because doing so would embolden Putin and all revisionist powers, we are in the unfortunate position of supporting a government and war that seem to have lost popular mandate in Ukraine a long time ago.

Here’s the latest survey from Gallup. Ukrainian support for the war effort has collapsed to under 25 percent.

Now, if you believe all the hokum that has been used to justify our involvement, that NATO’s credibility depends on Russian defeat, then what does Ukrainian public opinion matter? We need to keep propping up our unwilling boxer and sending him out to lose every round until he somehow exhausts his opponent into submission. Because the war stops being about democracy and self-determination; it’s about Western resolve.

This is a predictable, and predicted, disaster of our own choosing.