Seven in ten Americans say inflation is “a very big problem for the country,” according to a May public opinion poll from the Pew Research Center. That makes the issue far and away the most pressing concern in the minds of the public — some 15 points above “the affordability of health care,” which 55 percent of Americans ranked as “a very big problem” in the survey.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky might not be reading American public-opinion polls, but he’s certainly aware inflation is a problem around the world. So it was odd for him to dismiss inflation as “nothing” in his interview yesterday with Piers Morgan. When asked about the “growing number of Americans who don’t think the country should be spending so much money on a war in Europe when there are so many problems domestically,” Zelensky responded that Ukrainians were “fighting for absolutely communal values” and that “therefore, inflation is nothing, COVID is nothing. Ask those people who lost their children, their peace, their property at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. Who is thinking about masks and COVID? Who is thinking about inflation? These things are secondary.”
It should go without saying, of course, that for the Ukrainians fighting for their lives, the financial concerns of Americans struggling to make ends meet here at home would seem trivial. High gas prices 4,000 miles away don’t mean much when you’re in a war for the survival of your nation. But Zelensky was talking about U.S. foreign policy. He wasn’t only arguing that inflation and Covid didn’t matter to Ukrainians in the face of Russia’s invasion. He was arguing that, relatively speaking, it shouldn’t matter to Americans; their domestic concerns should not affect their willingness to support the “communal values” for which Ukraine fights, values he believes “are professed in the United States and in Europe.” Zelensky adds that the “integrity” of the United States is at stake in the conflict.
With respect to Zelensky, he is not the one who gets to determine American foreign policy. Call me old-school, but I tend to think American foreign policy should be oriented toward serving the interests of the American people. We can unite in solidarity with the Ukrainian people’s struggle against Putin’s aggression, providing aid to help with their war effort, but our assistance should be dictated by — and directed toward — the American interest. As Ukraine’s leader, Zelensky is obviously going to want us to subordinate our domestic concerns to those of the country he leads. But America should think of its own interests first. Appealing to financially insecure Americans by downplaying their problems is, to put it mildly, not a recipe for winning over hearts and minds in the nation that has been Ukraine’s most generous backer during the war. (This, alongside a Vogue photo shoot, doesn’t strike me as prudent optics either.)
If Zelensky wants to make a case for continued American support, he should be able to explain why such policies are in the American interest. And he should explain it in concrete, material terms, without abstract appeals to vaguely-defined “communal values” or side-swipes at struggling working- and middle-class Americans who are already predisposed to wonder how sending billions of their tax dollars to a conflict in a far-away country is serving their communities.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have been courageous in their fight to resist Putin’s advances, and the moral case for their cause is unambiguous. But he should not be so dismissive of America’s own problems as he makes the case for continued American support. We are an exceptionally generous country, but not infinitely so. To Americans, inflation is not “nothing”; it matters a great deal. Zelensky should be able to convey that he understands this. If he fails to do so, he might find his cause suffering in America as a result.