Essay on Apples: United States and Ukraine

Submitted By applesandbananays
Words: 888
Pages: 4

Should the US intervene in Ukraine?

Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union and because of this, parts of the Ukraine are still very Russian. Over a month ago, Viktor Yanukovych, the current president of the Ukraine, was offered a revised agreement by the European Union(EU) which would create gradual economic integration and deepening of political involvement for the Ukraine with all countries associated with the EU. A day or two before Viktor was going to make the agreement official, Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia, proposed a more generous agreement in which Russia would provide a $15 billion loan, and a steep discount on natural gas. Yanukovych eventually sided with Putin causing an increase in demonstrations and outrage in the western half of Ukraine. This outrage scared Yanukovych into hiding and he has not surfaced as of yet, however tensions are building between the western and eastern halves of Ukraine and civil war is a possibility. On top of that, in the last week or so Putin has stationed troops both on the border of Russia and Ukraine and in two airports in Yevpatoriya, a largely Russian peninsula in southern Ukraine. With Putin knocking on the Ukraine’s door with the western half unprotected, a big question has arisen: Should the United States of America intervene in Ukraine? The answer is no. The US has been in similar situations before, Libya and Afghanistan come to mind (how’d those turn out), but the real issue here is that the US would be going up against Russia, two of the larger powers in the world today. This set up is reminiscent of WWI. Two major powers start going at it and this long chain of alliances drags the entire world into a pointless, costly war. Today, if the US gets involved that drags in NATO which means most of Europe, Canada, and Turkey. and with Russia in the mix, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are all obligated to join, and if losses were so tremendous in WWI then with technological advancements such as nuclear weapons, a world war now would be even more devastating, and even more pointless. This issue doesn’t have anything to do with the United States of America. This is a Ukrainian issue and we have no obligation to intervene, so why risk American lives without a just cause. When we intervened in Afghanistan, we were up against a fairly small terrorist organization that has done awful things, but didn’t have powerful allies. We marched thousands of soldiers right into the cold hands of death just to try to secure a short lived democracy for a country with not much going for them. We lost horribly in Afghanistan, how could we do better in Ukraine. Let’s talk Libya. NATO attempted to intervene in the Libyan civil war to stop the killing of innocent civilians. This is hypocritical considering that their intervention caused the deaths of thousands of Libyan civilians. Even when Libya finally settled down, the peace and prosperity was not long lasting and in a very short period of time, Libya was back in a state of total chaos. Between the Afghanistan and Libyan interventions the United States has spent over 700 billion dollars and caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and American soldiers. Imagine what we will lose in Ukraine. The argument has been made that as a firm advocate and supporter of democratic government, the