There’s a path to NATO membership Ukraine has that Afghanistan didn’t. The US never considered the Afghan people a true ally - just a useful tool to weaken Russia. Similar to Ukraine arming Russian separatists but on a much larger scale. Everyone wants this war to end on all sides. It’s just a matter of forcing Putin into good faith bargaining or total Russian victory.
I feel like we would need to utterly destroy the working class to the point that cheap Chinese EVs would become expensive if we were to compete at the same level. I could be wrong, but how many of the chinese workers are driving brand new evs?