By Nate Hochman
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Seven in ten Americans say inflation is “a very big
problem for the country,” according to a May public opinion poll from the Pew Research Center.
That makes the issue far and away the most pressing concern in the minds of the
public — some 15 points above “the affordability of health care,” which 55
percent of Americans ranked as “a very big problem” in the survey.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky might not be
reading American public-opinion polls, but he’s certainly aware inflation is a
problem around the world. So it was odd for him to dismiss inflation as
“nothing” in his interview yesterday with Piers Morgan. When asked
about the “growing number of Americans who don’t think the country should be
spending so much money on a war in Europe when there are so many problems
domestically,” Zelensky responded that Ukrainians were “fighting for absolutely
communal values” and that “therefore, inflation is nothing, COVID is nothing.
Ask those people who lost their children, their peace, their property at the
beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. Who is thinking about masks and
COVID? Who is thinking about inflation? These things are secondary.”
It should go without saying, of course, that for the
Ukrainians fighting for their lives, the financial concerns of Americans
struggling to make ends meet here at home would seem trivial.
High gas prices 4,000 miles away don’t mean much when you’re in a war for the
survival of your nation. But Zelensky was talking about U.S. foreign policy. He
wasn’t only arguing that inflation and Covid didn’t matter to Ukrainians in the
face of Russia’s invasion. He was arguing that, relatively speaking, it
shouldn’t matter to Americans; their domestic concerns should not affect their
willingness to support the “communal values” for which Ukraine fights, values
he believes “are professed in the United States and in Europe.” Zelensky adds
that the “integrity” of the United States is at stake in the conflict.
With respect to Zelensky, he is not the one who gets to
determine American foreign policy. Call me old-school, but I tend to think
American foreign policy should be oriented toward serving the interests of the
American people. We can unite in solidarity with the Ukrainian people’s
struggle against Putin’s aggression, providing aid to help with their war
effort, but our assistance should be dictated by — and directed toward — the
American interest. As Ukraine’s leader, Zelensky is obviously going
to want us to subordinate our domestic concerns to those of the country he
leads. But America should think of its own interests first. Appealing to
financially insecure Americans by downplaying their problems is, to put it
mildly, not a recipe for winning over hearts and minds in the nation that has
been Ukraine’s most generous backer during the war. (This, alongside a Vogue photo
shoot, doesn’t strike me as prudent optics either.)
If Zelensky wants to make a case for continued American
support, he should be able to explain why such policies are in the American
interest. And he should explain it in concrete, material terms, without
abstract appeals to vaguely-defined “communal values” or side-swipes at
struggling working- and middle-class Americans who are already predisposed to
wonder how sending billions of their tax dollars to a conflict in a far-away
country is serving their communities.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have been courageous in
their fight to resist Putin’s advances, and the moral case for their cause is
unambiguous. But he should not be so dismissive of America’s own problems as he
makes the case for continued American support. We are an exceptionally generous
country, but not infinitely so. To Americans, inflation is not “nothing”; it
matters a great deal. Zelensky should be able to convey that he understands
this. If he fails to do so, he might find his cause suffering in America
as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment