Compared to the human cost in blood, trauma, and displacement inflicted by Russia in its monstrous assault on Ukraine— the “pain” felt by Americans shelling out extra dollars to gas up our automobiles amounts to a mere annoyance. But it’s the least we can do to support the effort to halt Vladimir Putin’s aggression and, hopefully, compel the people of his country to steer their once-proud nation in a new direction.
On Tuesday, President Biden laid out the case for a new sanction that will undoubtedly lead to even higher costs at the pumps: The US will ban oil and natural gas imports from Russia, a measure that will further cripple the Russians’ already reeling economy and— we hope— deplete their capacity to murder their neighbors.
“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States,” our president explained in announcing the decision, which he referred to as “Putin’s price hike.” “I said I would level with the American people from the beginning, and when I first spoke to this, I said defending freedom is going to cost us as well in the United States.”
The ban, Biden noted, has bipartisan support, an accomplishment that might be one of the only truly remarkable outcomes that we can credit to Putin. His depraved lunge at Ukraine has managed to unite one of the most dysfunctional and fractured institutions in our nation, the US Congress, if only for the moment.
How will Americans respond to the challenge at hand? Will we retreat into the isolationism and nihilism that defined the four-year presidency of Biden’s predecessor? Or will we rise to the moment, shoulder our share of the burden, and rally to aid our allies in Europe as they are yet again confronted by the specter of invasion and occupation.
The mood here in Boston, at least, breaks in favor of the latter. Last weekend, a crowd gathered at the Polish American Club on the Southie-Dorchester line to raise money and glasses for Ukraine. Over the weekend, hundreds marched with blue-and-yellow flags on the Boston Common. There seems to be general consensus that the brutality of the bombardment targeting civilians demands not only the world’s condemnation, but also its collective response to thwart further aggression and atrocities.
So far, the Biden administration and NATO allies have been careful not to throw our forces headlong into a direct confrontation with Putin’s forces. Despite the desperate pleas for a ‘no-fly-zone’ from Ukraine’s valiant President Zelensky, there will be no such escalation, our president has said. It’s a tough, but sensible, call. Circumstances may at some point call for American troops, airmen, and sailors to be in action against Russia, but such an unprecedented battle could well lead to a nuclear exchange, a calamity that only a deranged person would seriously consider as an option.
For now, the best course is to pump funds, weaponry, and humanitarian aid into Ukraine and surrounding democracies that are receiving refugees while simultaneously stripping the Russian dictator of his wealth and arsenal. And, in the meantime, if that means some additional austerity measures for us here to help hobble Putin’s war machine— we’re all for it.
