“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
The White House has made it clear: While they’re fully prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory, the United States doesn’t intend to put troops in Ukraine. Instead, the nation plans to punish Vladimir Putin’s allies and Russia’s economy. President Joe Biden said recently that the U.S. and its European allies will find and seize Russian oligarchs’ yachts, luxury apartments, and private jets. Already, French authorities have seized a yacht linked to Russian oligarch Igor Sechin.
But where do Americans stand when it comes to confronting Russia? After all, they’re going to have to bear some of the economic costs—with the most obvious being what’s happening to gas prices. It has been found that Americans are eager to punish Russia financially. Among U.S. adults, 67% support issuing additional sanctions on the Kremlin. Another 14% are opposed to additional sanctions, while 19% are undecided. However, Americans are uneasy with the idea of challenging Russia, a nuclear power, militarily. Just 41% of respondents told us they’d support sending American troops to Ukraine. Meanwhile, 43% of respondents said they’d be opposed to sending troops.
“People do not make wars; governments do.”
Recently, I watched an older movie called War Games, released in 1983 during the cold war. In the movie, a teenage boy manages to hack into the nuclear database for military defense. He thinks it is a game and causes a lot of drama. The military officials believe that they are in imminent danger of nuclear war with Russia, and prepare to fire back. The computer, in charge of causing the mess, is stopped, and the crisis is avoided. In the end, the moral is that in nuclear war, there is no winner. The only way to win is not to play. I fear that there will be devastation and worldwide suffering if the US gets involved, and we’ll have world war three on our hands. I can only hope that our government does not create a catastrophe that spurs us into war. As I have sympathy and compassion for the people suffering in Ukraine, We must not get involved. America must not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.