Most Americans are opposed to sending troops to fight Russia in Ukraine. Zero Hedge/The Epoch Times. In an Economist/YouGov poll just 19 percent supported sending combat troops to directly fight the Russians, with 54 percent saying it was a bad idea. The same poll found that only 33 percent supported sending non-combat troops to Ukraine. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63% were opposed to sending troops. Despite opposition to sending troops to Ukraine, large majorities supported sanctions against Russia.
The Economist/YouGov pol can be found here.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll can be found here.
My Comment:
I don't usually use Zero Hedge or the Epoch Times for a source, but given they were mostly discussing the primary sources of polling I thought it was fine in this case. Neither outlet is all that great in terms of reliability but the polling they are discussing are from companies that have a lot of experience with polling.
Given the shrill and frankly unhinged propaganda coming out about the war in Ukraine, I am surprised the numbers are as low as they are. If you listen to the propaganda you would think that the Russians are literal nazis and that the Ukrainians are winning.
But support for sending troops is still low. Why? I think there is a few reasons for it. One is that America is mostly tired of war. In the past twenty years, since 9/11, we have not known anything close to peace, with troops being sent to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. We finally got out of Afghanistan and we embarrassed ourselves in the process. There just isn't any apatite for a war.
The other thing to remember is that Russia is a nuclear armed country and I think many Americans are smart enough to realize that any combat between Russians and Americans could lead to a nuclear exchange. Indeed, if they had mentioned that in either poll I think the numbers supporting sending in combat troops would be around 5%, which is about the number of people you get agreeing to pretty much anything. I can't imagine that anyone really wants a nuclear war with Russia.
I am surprised that so many people support sanctions, even if they understand that it will cause gas prices and other economic effects. Given how unaffordable gas price are already, I can't imagine there are many people that would willingly pay more. Of course the polling was done last week, before gas prices spiked so badly. In my area the gas prices went up more than 60 cents and may continue to rise. That might damage the support for sanctions.
As for the war itself, I am not surprised there is almost no western support for it. After all, even I don't support it even though I understand why Putin did it, it was still a war of choice. Very few people even understand the circumstances of the war and are buying the propaganda against Russia.
With that being said, I think the people that are buying into the propaganda are going to end up disappointed. Real life isn't like a Marvel movie. Russia appears to be winning despite all the propaganda saying otherwise. They have been slowed down near Kiev but in the rest of the country they are running over defenses fairly quickly.
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