Basically your entire augment is based on an erroneous premise, in that the real issue is the Russian intentions and actions to ensure the Ukraine does NOT drift towards the West/EU. The entire ethic Russian debate is merely a facade that is used as rationalization and it is something that they help instigate in the first place.
The problem is that at the most senior US levels you have amateurs. While the bureaucracy is highly competent (highly selective, extensive training, often folks with decades of experience), in such organizations as the DoD and Department of State, the most senior officials are appointed politically, and they are often buffoons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EFMHtmNHbg (need one say more?) or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o
The executive office if frozen into inaction and EVERYONE knows that the US will do nothing except spew hot air... This administration is bent on military disengagement and is more concerned with social issues inside the US: health care, immigration, race, global warming, the homosexual agenda... There will be no military action or even anything that could potentially cause escalation, so the Russians will win by default because they are willing to wager more in this poker game plus their folks aren’t amateurs (they have so far cleaned the US’s clocks in the intel game). That simple. All the normally long winded and self ingratiating Obama can do is give a 3 minute speech, because he’s already lost this game and he knows it too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU79NIoWDIE
The Ukraine will NOT orient itself to Europe, but you should be happy, you’re a European and you like a more passive, weaker, non-militaristic US... The Germans like the Carter, Clinton, Obama... types for a reason.
they already held a couple of major bloodlettings during the last hundred years. we have yet to see our nation laid waste as Europe was.