OPINION: Americans Don’t Care (All that Much) About Russia or Ukraine.

Mostly, Americans hold no strong views on the Russian-Ukrainian War. They really don’t care much about either Russia or the Ukraine. But despite this reality, many politicians constantly voice very strong pro-Ukrainian positions on the war. Almost universally, Democrat politicians are usually fiercely pro-Ukrainian. So are Neo-Con Republicans. The pro-Ukrainian position is also voiced almost constantly by the liberal TV networks, which generally align with Democrat politicians, and this view appears to be largely accepted, but with far-lesser conviction, by their viewers. But even most of the pro-Ukrainians in the United States could likely not locate Ukraine on a map, and they appear to know almost nothing about the country’s history. Interestingly, it appears to us that Democrats and Neo-Cons are not really so much pro-Ukrainian, as they are rather anti-Russian, and thus in any war involving Russia, they will support those fighting the Russians.

Let us distinguish between three groups of Americans: those who openly support Ukraine; those who openly support Russia (a far-lesser number); and those who really don’t care about either of these two countries. We tend to believe that a large majority of Americans really don’t care about this war or about who wins it. They don’t support Ukraine; they don’t support Russia; the war is not a matter of personal interest, and, as stated, they don’t much care who wins. Most Americans, we believe, would like the war to stop, as they want the killing and the destruction to stop, but they really are not at all invested in the terms of any cease-fire or peace treaty.

Most Americans had no idea that the Biden Administration had sent over $350 billion dollars to Ukraine. They feel that if the US has this kind of money to “throw away,” the money should rather go to taking care of disabled US veterans, closing the border, deporting aliens (especially criminal aliens), and assuring that Medicare is there for them when they are ready to retire. Among those who pay income taxes (it is estimated that approximately 40% of all Americans do not pay any income taxes, not even a penny, as their earnings are below the minimum tier for income tax liability), most would rather see their taxes lowered than for them to continue to have to “cough up” tax payments, just so that their money can be sent to Ukraine. They say we should spend the money on the environmental disaster caused by the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio; or spend the money on the hurricane victims in western North Carolina; or spend the money to help those who have lost their homes and businesses to the southern California fires; but please don’t tell us, they say, that there’s no money for America while sending enormous sums to Ukraine. Many apparently feel that a substantial percentage of the money paid to Ukraine indirectly was funnelled to corrupt politicians.

As for who started this war, again we see the same divide. Those guided by political parties or the TV commentators, blame Putin. Those who don’t fall into that camp say former President Biden “goaded” Putin into starting this war by continuously threatening to urge NATO membership for Ukraine, by suggesting that missiles to be aimed at Moscow be positioned on the Ukrainian side of the border with Russia, and by constantly insulting Putin.

Until this war started, Ukraine had never been an ally of the United States, and had never been a trading partner with the United States. Typically, among travelling Americans, very, very few have ever even visited Ukraine, which was long regarded as the most corrupt country in Europe. Sure, there’s a war, and depending upon whom you ask, one side or the other caused the war. But, there are wars all over the world all the time, and they are not, and should not be, our wars. Whether a strip of land on Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia ends up belonging to Ukraine or to Russia is not an issue that really resonates with Americans.

At AmericanVantagePoint.com we are certainly reminded of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev placed nuclear missiles on Cuba, aimed at the US, and President John F. Kennedy took the position that the transformation of Cuba into an important Russian strategic base was an explicit threat to America’s security. Was this not the mirror image of Biden proposing to place missiles on Ukraine’s border with Russia? Is Putin’s response to this threat much different than JFK’s response to Khrushchev’s threat?

We labeled this posting “Opinion,” and indeed that is what it is. We did not conduct a proper poll, and we doubt any poll (other than an American election) would be accepted as authoritative, no matter what it showed. Nor did we do an analysis of the many partisan and unscientific or disputed polls already out there. But we do believe we have a good vantage point from which to understand what many Americans think about Ukraine, to the extent that they even think about Ukraine, which very few do at all.

So what about President Trump’s proposed “rare-earth minerals” deal with Ukraine, which is advanced as a way to recoup some or all of the money the US has sent to Ukraine to prosecute this war? First off, most people have no idea what “rare-earths” are or why they are important. This publication understands the value of rare earths, and agrees with Mr. Trump that if the U.S. can secure a constant and reliable stream of rare-earths from Ukraine, this will be most valuable. But fundamentally, the reading we have on this is that no matter what agreement Ukraine might eventually sign, there is no assurance that Ukraine will honor that agreement going forward. If Ukraine repudiates the agreement at some later date, what will we do? Certainly we do not want to change places with Russia and send our troops to Ukraine to enforce the deal. Mr. Trump’s thinking is that the deal will be self-enforcing as it will be mutually beneficial to both the U.S. and to Ukraine. But if Ukrainian leaders think that breaking the deal and selling their rare-earths on other markets would be even more beneficial to them, we do not doubt that Europe’s most corrupt country would repudiate the deal.

Our thinking is that if Ukraine makes a rare-earths agreement with the US, that agreement will only be honored until the US has spent huge sums to explore for rare-earths, and to build mining operations and refineries, and that as soon as this infrastructure is in place, and the mines are profitably producing, Zelenskyy (or some future Ukrainian leader) will simply nationalize the operation, and the US will have invested still more money in Ukraine and gotten nothing for its efforts.

Only one further comment on rare-earths. Rare-earths are present in eastern Ukraine, on both sides of the formerly Ukrainian territory now controlled by Russia. Somewhere between 50% and 70% of the rare-earths are in the areas won by Russia, and no one really believes that any peace terms that are acceptable to Russia will require the return of this territory to Ukraine.

To return to an earlier point in this commentary, Democrats voicing a visceral dislike for Russia is a complete reversal, as liberal progressives in the United States were traditionally supporters of the old Soviet Union. Just one example: Now Senator, and then Burlington, Vermont Mayor, Bernie Sanders, traveled to the Soviet Union shortly after his wedding in 1988 to establish a sister-city relationship between Burlington and Yaroslavl, a sister-city relationship that he had promoted as Burlington Mayor. The strong denunciation of Russia by Democrats and the “mainstream media” did not become pervasive until Donald Trump campaigned for his first term. Suddenly, all Democrats said in unison that Trump was being supported by Russia and that he was Putin’s puppet. This claim continues unabated to this day. Democrats are implacable in their disdain for Russia and Putin, and they repeatedly claim that Trump is aligned with Russian interests. But to the extent that these claims were originally believed, with the passage of many years during which the claims have been continued, without proof being offered or evidence submitted, most Americans, as we see it, no longer put any stock into such charges. The ostensible proof, the Trump-Russia dossier that was compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele and made public during the presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, was later definitively learned to have been a work of fiction entirely financed by Clinton’s campaign. Despite the only basis upon which the Trump-Russian collusion claims were supported having been entirely repudiated, the anti-Russia attitude constantly voiced by Democrats continues unabated. Thus, we arrive back at where we started, to conclude that for all their many words of support for Ukraine, the Democrats are not really pro-Ukrainian, but support Ukraine because it is engaged in a war against Russia, which they condemn and despise.

Another interesting reversal in roles, is that the Democratic Party was traditionally viewed as the party of peace while the Republicans were viewed as the party of warmongers. But now, the Democrats have largely caused the US (under Biden) to finance the Ukrainian war, and are solidly against Trump’s efforts to obtain a ceasefire. Of course, they do not say they are against a ceasefire; rather, they just never will like the proposed terms unless those terms are decidedly anti-Russian.

The Democrats and Neo-Cons constant anti-Russian comments do not appear to be finding receptive ears among the American population. These anti-Russian rants have gone on for so long without any proof of legitimacy, that only those who are Democratic Party leaders and strongly-supportive constituants continue to give any credence to these assertions. Indeed, Trump won twice (and he says, three times), while his opposition lobbed these Russian-collusion charges at him.

But we’re not saying that Americans like Russia now: What we are saying is that Americans are now so unimpressed by these long recycled and constantly regurgitated anti-Russian claims that they no longer care, one way or the other, about Russia. And to come back to our starting point, neither Russia nor Ukraine is high on most Americans’ lists of things that they care about. They would like this war to end, but they have no investment in the terms of a ceasefire or of a final peace treaty and, to be blunt, they really don’t much care which country gets to keep the territory in Ukraine’s east, along the Russian border, that Russia has captured in this war.

We saw Ukrainian President Zelenskyy disrespecting President Trump, Vice President Vance, and indeed the Oval Office, during his recent disgraceful attempt to renegotiate an agreement on live TV. He had ostensibly arrived at the White House for a formal signing of a rare-earths minerals agreement that had been fully negotiated by US and Ukrainian negotiators. His role was to smile and put wet ink on the agreement his team had approved. Instead, he tried to reopen the negotiations on live TV, an insulting behavior that ambushed President Trump. But even more than scuttling the minerals deal, Zelenskyy also scuttled (or at least delayed) Trump’s desire to negotiate a ceasefire. Zelenskyy showed himself as not wanting to accept a ceasefire. He told Mr. Trump that he shouldn’t trust Russian President Putin to observe the ceasefire. Zelenskyy showed that he was not on board to accept a cease fire that Mr. Trump planned to negotiate with Putin, and thus there is going to be no ceasefire, at least not too soon. Zelenskyy came across as conceited, smug, and ungrateful. Mr. Trump dressed down Zelenskyy, creating some of the greatest TV in quite some time, telling Zelenskyy that if he wanted to go on fighting he could do so without the US. Mr. Trump then showed Zelenskyy the door, telling him to leave the White House and not come back until he was ready for peace. Perhaps Zelenskyy will get back to Ukraine and they’ll show him the door too.