the current narrative is dangerous and risks leading to escalation beyond Ukraine and has already caused a lot of suffering
I would say it's all the shelling and rocket attacks and bombings, not so much the narrative.
In general I think trying to talk and understand the world is not a hostile act. If you're trying to deliberately distort honest conversation to justify something, then that's a bad thing, but just saying that some sincere narrative right or wrong can be a dangerous thing all on its own, I don't agree with.
To me it’s hard to imagine that after Russia put their army on the border and explicitly said, Ukraine stays neutral or war, that the US wasn’t aware of the consequences.
Bro
What if I put a couple of my friends on the border of your house, and explicitly said, hey if you try to do X Y or Z then I might have to kill you. What's your reaction? What's fair in that scenario? If you ask for some allies to come over because you plan on doing X Y and Z anyway and fuck the border-standers, does it all of a sudden become the allies' fault that any of that happened? What you're saying is just a very weird allocation of blame to me.
Like I say, what Mearsheimer says on this issue actually makes a good deal of sense to me, but what you're saying here is very different from what he says about it, as far as I know. I think one of the critical issues is whether the whole thing was a "ploy" by the West -- he definitely doesn't think that, that I'm aware of. Where did you get that idea? It definitely doesn't seem to me that fighting between Russia and various former-USSR states needed any additional help in order to develop, although I'm sure the US is happy it's happening and happy to help it go badly for Russia.
Clearly Ukrainian lives were not on the forefront of their decision making process at that point.
I think it's relevant what the Ukrainians think. Are you saying that rejecting Russia's orders for what they were and were not allowed to do, knowing that Russia might attack them as a result, was not their decision but someone else's? What do you think they think about it?
Here's a little excerpt, somewhat related, from "Sky Above Kharkiv" by Serhiy Zhadan:
"And I'd like to make another point. I was rather skeptical of the current government. I was struck by one particular thing. The elections of 2019 brought a lot of young people to power -- not my peers (I'm a far cry from being young) but a bunch of political youngsters who didn't belong to dozens of parties or hadn't worked for all kinds of shady cabinets of ministers. 'But why do these young people,' I thought, 'act like old functionaries from the Kuchma era? Where did their childish urge to make a quick buck and flaunt it come from? Why aren't they trying to be different?' Thing is, I personally had the chance to do what I still consider rather constructive, useful things with a lot of them -- everyone from ministers to mayors and governors. Nonetheless, I'd look toward the Parliament building and ask myself, 'Why aren't you trying to be different?'
"Now [in wartime] with the naked eye you can see them trying to be different. Advisers, speakers, ministers, negotiators, officers, mayors, and commanders -- these forty-year-old boys and girls whose generation has been dealt the cruel lot of having to stand up for their country. And this applies no less (and possibly even more) to the millions of soliders, volunteer fighters, and just regular people pitching in, people shedding the swampy legacy of the twentieth century, like mud falling off new, yet well-chosen combat boots. Young Ukrainian men and women -- that's who this war of annihilation is being waged against. And then, in contrast, are the heads of Russia, Belarus, America, and Germany. The first two are old delusional geezers from the past century who look a lot like old Russian armored vehicles, but they're old. And they're Russian, which, in itself, does little to recommend a vehicle. Then there are the latter two -- they're cautious office clerks, retired capitulators who aren't brave enough to admit that they, too, are involved in what's going on."