In a recent interview with Sky News on 16 October, the U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen said that Ukraine’s military very much depends on the U.S. funding in the ongoing war against Russia. So far the U.S. total aid to Ukraine since February 2022 has surpassed $113 billion. Mrs. Yellen also claimed that, given the good performance of the U.S. economy, the country would have enough resources to support two wars - the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war - at the same time. Then, following the U.S. President’s trip to Israel, on 19 October in the Oval Office, he made an address to the nation, through which, the U.S. leadership stated that his proposal to the U.S. Congress for asking assistance for Ukraine and Israel is “a smart investment that’s going to pay dividends for American security for generations”. The U.S. President also declared that “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. America values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with.”

Given the currently complex contexts across various regions of the globe, then how to understand the statements delivered by the U.S. officials?

Apparently, amid the fragile security situation in Europe and the Middle East respectively driven by the Ukraine crisis and the Israel-Hamas conflict at the moment, in addition to the growing complex relationship between the U.S. and other major powers alongside the implementation of the U.S. grand strategy, from the U.S. government perspective, it is certainly not in the U.S. interest in showing any of the country’s possible weaknesses to the world, as that would risk losing the confidence of the U.S. allies in the country’s capacity and credibility.

However, it is in need to be aware that whether or not the U.S. has adequate resources to aid two wars cannot change the fact that the Ukraine crisis has turned into a burden for the United States. It has led to a turmoil of the U.S. domestic politics already. There has been a division within the U.S. on the country’s interest and involvement in the Ukraine war including the amount of aid flowing to Ukraine in various forms especially in military assistance. Because of that, the former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed from his post. Besides that, alongside the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. public supporting rate to the president has kept going down.

For Ukraine, the situation has been even worse, as it appears that the country has mostly - if not completely - lost its sovereign status, as reflected by the fact that the normal functioning of the government, of the military, and of other public service sectors such as schools and hospitals, for a very significant part, has to depend on the U.S. assistance now. The advisors to the Ukrainian President expected to deploy an attritional strategy to get Russia weaker and finally to pull Russia down, yet the reality turned out that so far Ukraine has suffered more heavily in human casualties as well as in other material and non-material forms. For the number of casualties, it was roughly estimated that, since Ukraine’s counteroffensive started in early June, more than 90000 Ukrainian military service personnel had lost their lives till mid-October.

Apart from showing their fatigue toward the ongoing war in various ways, the Ukrainian public has expressed their dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian government in managing domestic affairs in the meantime. According to a opinion poll jointly conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Charitable Foundation and the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in July, almost 8 out of 10 Ukrainian adult citizens took the Ukrainian President directly responsible for the country’s rampant corruption.

In his national address, the U.S. leadership expressed his sympathy to the civilian victims of both sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict, and also declared the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue (the two-state solution is also widely supported by the international community). Then, as a responsible great nation, instead of standing up to claim the U.S. great power status and interests, and of generating resentment and hate by adding more fuel into the fire, it should be the right time for the U.S. to appease the great anger of all the warring parties, to promote the ceasefire of the ongoing two wars, and further to take concrete steps to settle the Palestinian issue by applying a two-state solution.