https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/21/russia-us-escalation-how-did-we-get-here

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Over the past year, tensions between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the West on the other, have flared, fuelling fears of another armed conflict.

To understand why this escalation took place and how it exposes fundamental deficiencies of the US strategy in the former Soviet space, it is important to look back at how events unfolded over the past year.

The standoff began almost immediately after US President Joe Biden took office in January this year. This coincided with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky abruptly turning from the compromise-seeking dove he had been known as into a Russia hawk.

In what appeared as a coordinated effort, Biden and Zelensky attempted a more assertive policy vis-a-vis Russia with the goal of achieving tangible results for Kyiv

With Biden in office, Zelensky launched a legal attack on Putin’s Ukrainian ally, Viktor Medvedchuk

Simultaneously, the Ukrainian leadership, aided by influential think tanks in the US, embarked on a PR campaign for Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

This came just two weeks after a paper was published by a NATO-linked think tank, the Atlantic Council

The document envisaged the US taking over the Ukraine peace settlement effort, previously led by France and Germany, and pressing Russia into making concessions. Should Moscow keep showing "intransigence", it suggested offering Ukraine a roadmap to NATO membership.

The document also called for derailing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project

Feeling that the opposite side was trying to upset the delicate equilibrium achieved at the end of the hot phase of the war in 2015, Putin responded in March in his trademark heavy-handed manner – by deploying a menacing military force at the Ukrainian border.

The Americans took advantage of Russia’s menacing moves and tried to sell the invasion scare to the German public and political elite to get them to halt the construction of the gas pipeline. They assumed that Putin was bluffing and would not act if the project was cancelled, except he was not. Of course, it was never about a full-blown invasion, which is a figment of the American public imagination. But a limited operation with no major land grabs, aimed at coercing Ukraine into an even more humiliating truce, would have been very much on the cards.

The plan to outsmart Putin failed in the first round. Merkel's government would not halt the pipeline construction

Biden eventually agreed to remove the US opposition to Nord Stream 2. But he managed to get Merkel to make a vaguely worded promise on limiting Russian energy export capabilities – that could possibly include shutting down Nord Stream 2 – should Russia invade Ukraine.

As coalition talks proceeded, a few escalatory moves – US warships sailing into the Black Sea – resulted in an uptick in Russian military build-up at the Ukrainian border. This is when the US embarked on a last-ditch PR offensive, making highly alarmist statements at the highest level and sharing classified intel with NATO allies, which ostensibly proved Russia’s malign intentions.

They overdid it. The scare felt way too real, making one wonder whether the goals the US tried to achieve in this game of brinkmanship were worth risking a conflict between two nuclear superpowers.

In the end, Washington failed to push Putin’s red lines, but instead exposed its own, when Biden conceded in early December that he would not send US troops to protect Ukraine.

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Now Biden has regrouped, is back on the strategy he previously backed away from. He let the pot cool down but has again turned the heat up.

The strategy remains the same - "America has always been at war with Russia".