How much “suffering” will Americans endure to save Ukraine from Russia’s brutality?
That depends—to paraphrase a line from former President Bill Clinton—on what the definition of “suffering” is.
It need not mean flag-draped coffins. Isolationists in both parties insist that Americans shouldn’t send their sons and daughters to fight, and perhaps die, in Eastern Europe.
I find this curious. The U.S. military is made up entirely of volunteers. This is not 1969. There is no draft. And Ukraine is not Vietnam. The job of U.S. military members is to go where they are told and do what they are ordered. That’s what people sign up for. It can be dangerous work, to be sure. And God bless those who do it. But heaven help us if we get to the point where our desire to “bubble-wrap” Generation Z extends to those who serve in uniform.
Be that as it may, with military intervention off the table for now, the conversation about what kind of “suffering” Americans might have to endure for standing up to Russia revolves around, of all things, rising gas prices.
President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he will ban Russian oil imports. And while those imports only account for a small amount of the U.S. fuel mix, motorists are still likely to feel the pinch at the pump.
The United States currently gets about 8 percent of its liquid fuel imports from Russia, according to the Energy Information Association. In 2021, Americans imported on average more than 20.4 million barrels of crude and refined products per month from Russia.
The U.S. Senate is also fast-tracking a bipartisan bill—by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—that would ban Russian energy imports. So, even if Biden were to back off the ban, lawmakers could impose one of their own.
Personally, I am already feeling the pain at the pump. Some of the highest prices in the country are in Southern California, where I live. Ten minutes from my home, in north San Diego County, one gas station now charges $5.59 per gallon for regular unleaded. The price has gone up 10 cents per gallon every day for the last week. It is now common to spend $80 to $100 to fill up one’s gas tank. And I don’t know any friends or neighbors who don’t expect the price for regular unleaded to hit $6 per gallon before the end of the month. Now, with the Biden ban, we may get there by the time you read this.
It’s a safe move politically to ban Russian imports, even with Americans facing down the barrel of rising gas prices. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, about 80 percent of Americans—including majorities of Republicans and Democrats—support the Senate bill.
Meanwhile, the brave and sturdy Ukrainian people know all too well the meaning of suffering. Their nation has been independent for only about 30 years, but they’ve experienced pain and death for many centuries. Today’s horror—which includes families torn apart, cities destroyed, children murdered, and an estimated 1.5 million refugees driven into neighboring Poland—is but the latest chapter.
Russians also know about suffering. They have been savagely brutalized by their own leaders, most famously the tyrannical Joseph Stalin whose regime, it is estimated, was responsible for the deaths of as many as 20 million people. This includes the millions who died from state-orchestrated famines. In the early 1990s, the crumbling of the former Soviet Union dried up jobs, closed businesses, and drove millions into poverty.
Then there are the Americans. We’re victims of our success. In 2022—as we anxiously try to put COVID-19 in our rearview mirror and get back to what we call “normal”—we worship at the altar of a cross whose four stations are comfort, leisure, convenience and entitlement.
There is no nice way to say this: Too many Americans have gone soft. We think about what we deserve, not in terms of what we can do for fellow human beings or give up for a greater good. We’re fragile. Everyone is a victim.
On the left, they get their feelings hurt if someone uses the wrong pronoun, or says something not “woke,” or criticizes a Democratic president, or gives former President Donald Trump credit for anything. On the right, they think that an immensely qualified black woman getting nominated to the Supreme Court means that somewhere a mediocre white male was shafted by “reverse discrimination.”
The American spirit is no longer rugged, built-tough, with a John Wayne swagger. Our tolerance for pain is lower than a rattlesnake’s belly.
That’s the point that Ted Koppel—the former anchor of ABC’s Nightline who is now a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning—made recently in an interview with retired Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency. They discussed a possible tit-for-tat “cyberwar” between the United States and Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
“The Russian people are accustomed to enduring pain,” Koppel said. “The American people, quite frankly, are not. So when it comes to those exchanges of cyberattacks, depriving us of what we need for our daily lives, that’s what the Russians have been doing forever. We are accustomed to having what we want when we want it.”
Americans used to be better at being tough, especially when we were directly threatened or attacked and had to make do with less.
The so-called Greatest Generation had grit. Imagine you spend your childhood surviving the Spanish Flu. Then you go through your adolescence enduring the poverty, hunger and hopelessness of the Great Depression. And then, for an encore, in your twenties, you go off to fight and—with the help of our allies—win World War II, defeating the tyrannical Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Those who stayed behind also made sacrifices, putting up with food shortages and the rationing of everything from coffee and meat to gasoline and firewood.
Times change. Americans are no longer in the mood to make sacrifices—not real sacrifices, anyway. Our very definition these days of what constitutes a “sacrifice” would seem laughable when compared to sacrifices being made by other human beings around the globe.
To the Americans of today, a “sacrifice” is when one is pressured to wear a mask in a restaurant or get vaccinated against COVID-19.
And to think, as Ukrainians mourn their dead and huddle underground in subway stations to hide from Russian bombs, a macho convoy of big rigs is rolling toward Washington, D.C., to protest against COVID-19 restrictions that they consider the epitome of “tyranny.”
When Koppel noted that Americans are not good at tolerating pain or sacrifice, Alexander conceded.
“You bring out a great point,” the general said. “And on the surface, what you say makes sense. What happens when that is disturbed? I believe we’ll grumble.”
Yet, Alexander predicted, this story need not end badly.
“But it is almost like what happened during World War II,” he said. “It will awaken the American people, my belief. And they’ll say: ‘This has to stop.’ I don’t know where that will go. I have tremendous faith and confidence in the will of the American people to push back when the going gets tough.”
Let’s pray he is right. Because, on the global playground, those who don’t push back get pushed around. And Americans—many of whom are used to comfort—won’t find that arrangement very comfortable.