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Ukraine doesn't want to give up land, and isn't willing to tolerate not having security guarantees. Russia is convinced that it can ultimately militarily prevail.
Wars end when one side is either unable to continue or the two sides moderate their demands to some kind of meeting point. What's the Biden administration going to do?
The US isn't willing to go to war on the matter, so compelling Russia militarily probably isn't an option. The US could have withdrawn military support for Ukraine, but I don't think that that's what you want. There's more sanctions, but we've already got a lot of sanctions in place, and you want a rapid resolution.
Maybe we could have dramatically ramped up aid for Ukraine, as long as Ukraine could have made use of it. The US is probably willing to do that to some degree, as long as it doesn't compromise its position relative to China. But will that substantively change the situation? Like, if you're Putin, you've probably got a pretty good incentive to try to stick it out, if you feel that Biden and Trump are going to have much of a difference in position.
This is uncomfortable to say, but the US President has pretty much unconstrained authority to control the diplomatic matters of most of our allies. It's not unlimited, but it's obviously enough that the President of the United States can -- if they choose to -- simply dictate the end of a proxy war. I think this is really more obvious common sense than some fringe theory, but for any skeptics, Trump demonstrated this by commanding Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal he hated that Biden had ostensibly been trying to secure for about 7 months. The only difference between Biden's seven months and Trump's seven days was that Trump didn't ask. He just dictated what was going to happen.
That is... horrible. It's not a basis for international relations or peace or sovereignty or respect for allies...
But it is a frank demonstration that Biden could end the war in Ukraine at pretty much any time. Any month of the year that suited him, he could've picked up the phones and said it was time to strike a deal.
He couldn't end it on the terms of his choosing! The terms would've sucked at all points, but negotiated settlement was always an option. And at any point if he'd done that, I can guarantee you that Ukraine would've gotten a better "deal" than what whatever is going to be imposed on them by Trump & Putin.
The point was always that whatever "deal" was worked out, unless Ukraine would become part of NATO or have security guarantees with say NATO boots on the ground for decades, Russia would have only used the temporary pause to build up its forces while doing hybrid warfare, then try again in a couple of years. Also, it is misleading to characterize the war in Ukraine as an American proxy war, it ignores the complex relationships between all involved actors and most importantly ignores Ukrainian autonomy. Lastly, Netanyahu did "what Trump said" temporarily because it was in his interest to boost Trump as he expected to soon get Trump's blessing to continue waging war on Palestinians (and it seems even Netanyahu was surprised by how emphatic Trump's approval is).
Now, IMO Biden should have been much bolder in sending more military support to Ukraine and approving long-distance strikes etc., which would have encouraged other NATO allies to do the same. By trying to play it safe, Biden & co. ensured that the conflict would become more drawn out and expand, making things more dangerous for everyone. The Democratic Party and European allies could have used much more war rhetoric, painting Russia as enemy number one, to drum up more popular support at home, but again hesitated. The Biden admin also should have worked with the Ukrainians and other European allies on a realistic, sustainable peace deal rather than talking loosely about how Ukraine needed to "accept" that they would lose terrain while also saying Ukraine's very reasonable security guarantee requests were "unrealistic". But that's very different. To suggest that Biden could have just said "ok stop, now peace" and created something lasting seems utterly out of touch with at least all of Russian politics ever since Putin came to power.
This is how you know it's a proxy war.
As you point out, Biden's decisions were obviously ones that would prolong the war rather than affording a decisive counteroffensive. This was because the goal of slowly bleeding Russia's military out to weaken a rival power and bolster the American weapons manufactures was placed more highly than than trying to put Ukraine into a position of strength from which to demand a ceasefire on their own terms.
I don't know what Zelensky wanted, or what his plans were. But I think the most obvious and sensible approach would've been to privately lay out the bargain: the US gives Ukraine more or less everything that it wants to kick Russia's ass for a couple of months with the awareness that a full defeat of Russia by Ukraine is impossible, and pursuing a regime change would be inviting a nuclear world war. As such, the US goes hard, and puts Ukraine in a position to make the most modest concessions necessary to end the war in a way that lets Russia survive while having demonstrated that the overall approach was a disaster.
Could Putin decide to try again a few years later? Sure. Is it likely? And would that situation have been worse than what we're about to watch Trump and Putin do? Jesus Christ, not by a Texas mile.
Letting the war continue under any terms into Trump's presidency should've been viewed as the number-one all-time greatest military vulnerability to Ukraine, and should've been prevented at any cost.
I'm not quite as convinced as you are that there was that deliberate a strategy to prolong the war and let it fester, and I still think the description of it as just an American proxy war is overly simplistic. But we do seem to agree on many points, most importantly that Ukraine should have gotten, and still should get, a lot more support and not be artificially restrained. Thanks for the chat.