'After two decades of overly ambitious and unsuccessful military interventions, several serious foreign policy pros yet again call on the U.S. to flex its muscle, to escalate America’s involvement in this conflict,' writes Mark Hannah and Dina Smeltz
to Russia’s invasion than think it did not. The top reason given is how the U.S. strengthened the Ukrainian resistance through military aid. However, the fact that the U.S. avoided a direct confrontation with Russia or that it encouraged NATO to strengthen Europe’s self-defense capability were, together, cited about as frequently. In other words, many support the president’s response because it’s not doing too much, not because it’s doing enough.
This support for restraint is found in the goals Americans prioritize for the U.S. response to the war. Avoiding a direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia ranked highest among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. Preventing the suffering of the Ukrainian people came next.
Though clearly sympathetic toward Ukraine and opposed to Russia’s aggression, Americans don’t seem to deem the stakes of the conflict worthy of the nuclear saber-rattling coming from some in Washington. Right before he launched the invasion, Putin alluded to nuclear weapons, and he recently reiterated that threat. Roughly three-quarters of people in one of our surveysover their use. After twenty years of fighting terrorism, the most common fear, predictably, is that nuclear weapons get into the hands of terrorists.