By: Aditeya Das
76 years! 76 years with no war in Europe. The continent of stability, democracy and altruism has now changed. The moment Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, these 3 values were demolished. In response to these actions, we have heard statements from many world leaders. The EU has placed sanctions, the G7 has condemned the Russians, the UK has placed sanctions over many important oligarchs, but where is the US? Where is the country that has been the epitome of intervention? The country that is the symbol of aid. The country that has stepped into several conflicts before but is now just spending its time placing sanctions all over Russia? Where the hell is the US?
The US as said before has had a history of intervention. From the times of the Vietnam war and Korean war, to their invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now there is something similar about all of these past conflicts. And it is the fact that they were meaningless and did not have a good effect. When the US intervened in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, they said they wanted to beat communism. This was, however, a pointless war. All that happened was a back and forth battle that ended up with a stalemate . Paired with this, a total of 5 million people died in the war, and 100,000 injuries.
However I feel that being recent is more important. Showing how the US has evolved is more important. Because of this let’s talk about Afghanistan and see how much the US has evolved. In 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan their main intention was to kill Osama Bin Laden and punish the Taliban. This war had however lasted for 20 years, despite the fact that the US reached its goal of killing Bin Laden. Shortly after leaving Afghanistan in August of last year, punishment against the Taliban was deemed ineffective as the Taliban now has near full control over the country showing how the US really has not learnt much from the Korean war.
These 2 cases of Afghanistan and Korea show how the US can intervene without being provoked. They were willing enough to hold their ground for so long even though it ended up with a stalemate on both attempts. However, how about now. How about when it really does count? Well, all we have seen is a bunch of empty words and phrases.
We are continuously hearing news of ‘Sanctions’, ‘Aid’, and many others, but have any of them really stopped the issue. No! Vladmir Putin has barely even taken note of these sanctions and has gone on with his huge onslaught over Ukraine.
Now as a writer I do understand the other side. There is a massive risk when it comes to deploying troops on the ground in Ukraine. Putin had even said that “anyone who would consider interfering from the outside” will “face consequences greater than any of you have faced in history”. This is obviously alluding to the fact that he has 6000 nukes holed up somewhere in Russia. However, what is the point of doing the same thing that you have been doing for so long and still not making a dent in the proceedings. And even if we take into account that these sanctions have hurt Putin, what about Russian civilians? What about the innocent people currently living in Russia, where they are facing massive food shortages, massively high prices, and a failing currency! All that has been said is just a pile of empty promises and statements with no proper action. What needs to be done is that the US and President Biden need to take a step back and assess the situation. Rather than going through just previous attempts at quelling conflicts, what they should do is look at what has not been done. They need to figure out an alternative that has not been used before, but is enough to make Putin stop the war. As a grade 9 student, I don’t know what this alternative could be. All I know is that for peace in Ukraine, for the stability of Russian civilians, for peace in Europe there must be a new way to tackle the problem.
Sources:
Comments