Yesterday I travelled from Poland to a small city in western Ukrainian called Khmelnytskyi. I plan to stay here until the end of October, focusing on learning more about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. I may find a tutor to help me practice speaking Ukrainian, and I will probably also spend time volunteering at some local humanitarian aid organizations or schools.
My first impression of Khmelnytskyi has been very pleasant. Even though a Russian missile strike early yesterday morning had damaged the local electrical utility, and there were two air-raid alerts early this morning, the people I met seemed to be generally energetic and in good spirits. Stores and shops were closed during the morning because of the air-raid alerts, but by afternoon, businesses had opened, people and cars were on the streets, and everything seemed to be business as usual. It was a beautiful, sunny autumn day, and the pleasant weather probably also helped to raise the spirits a little bit.
In the evening I met a couple of new-found local friends for dinner — two Ukrainian men in their mid-twenties. They were very curious about life in the United States. One question they asked was, how long does it usually take to achieve the American Dream? When I asked them what the American Dream meant to them, they said when you have enough money to own your own home and live carefree, your American Dream has come true.
Sadly, I could not respond honestly and forthrightly to this very simple question, because I believe as Americans we owe a debt of service to the rest of the world in return for our American Dream. The debt is owed because our American Dream is largely financed by the good faith and hope of less fortunate people around the world.
Indeed, we are able to finance our extravagant lifestyles in the United States largely because people all around the world perceive the United States as a fountain of wealth and a pillar of stability in a turbulent world. From the economic perspective, we pay for our American Dream with the U.S. dollar. As a nation, we run a huge trade deficit, which means we consume much more than we produce, and much of our American Dream lifestyle is sustained by importing goods and services from abroad. And we pay for all those extra goods and services simply by issuing U.S. dollars. In other words, U.S. dollars are viewed in commerce as more than simple medium of exchange – dollars actually have intrinsic value as financial assets in their own right. Every U.S. dollar used in international commerce is in essence a small investment in the future of the U.S. – a loan given on faith that the United States will continue to prosper as a safe haven and bulwark against chaos in the world of the future.
This faith of the world in the United States as a hedge against the perils of the future is a sacred trust. We Americans owe the people of the world, such as the two young Ukrainians I was speaking with tonight, a solemn duty to earn this trust (and the high standard of living it affords us) by working resolutely to maintain our resilience and ability to prevail over unforeseen challenges. If there is to be a sustainable American Dream, it should be tempered by the clear understanding that our exceptionally comfortable standard of living relies on our maintaining a grounded and resilient position of relative stability in the geopolitical ecology of this turbulent world.
This is a tall order, especially in a world shared with aggressive and bellicose empire builders such as Russia. When an aggressor such as Russia attempts to wreak havoc on world order and stability, every civic-minded American should step up to participate in the work of restoring order. We need to show our allies — the people of the nations of the world that look to us as a bulwark of security and stability, and invest in our U.S. dollar accordingly — that their cause is our cause, their fight is our fight, their pain is our pain, and we will stand side by side with them to prevail in the face of adversity. This is the debt we owe to the rest of the world in return for the privilege of living our American Dream.