CNN values your feedback

Opinion: who is winning gen. petraeus on ukraine war, two years in.

Peter Bergen

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room,” also on  Apple  and  Spotify . He is the author of  The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World .” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more  opinion  at CNN.

Two years into the Ukraine war, the tide has shifted, and Russian forces have some momentum, according to retired US General David Petraeus.

But he said the Russians have suffered staggering casualties and Ukraine can still hold its own in fighting off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion if it gets the support it needs from the United States.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began disastrously for Putin, marks its second anniversary this coming weekend. To get a better insight into the state of the war, I spoke to former CIA director David Petraeus, who was the commanding general during the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and is co-author with Lord Andrew Roberts of the new book “ Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine .”

Former director of the CIA Gen. David Petraeus participates in a panel discussion at the Warsaw Security Forum in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

Last weekend Gen. Petraeus was at the Munich Security Conference, the leading global national security conference that was attended by pretty much every European leader and by top American officials – including Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The atmosphere at the conference was somber, happening as the shocking news of Alexey Navalny’s death emerged and in the shadow of Ukraine’s withdrawal from the key eastern city of Avdiivka, all putting into sharp focus the impassioned pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for additional military assistance.

Shortly after the conference ended, I spoke with Gen. Petraeus. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

BERGEN: At the Munich Security Conference, what was the mood like?

PETRAEUS : It was different than any Munich Security Conference I’ve ever been to in the past – and I’ve been going to these since I was a major and a speechwriter for the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe in the late 1980s.

Typically, you have the US delegation there that is pushing everyone else to do more. But this time, the Europeans had never been more serious, while there was considerable uncertainty about the American side: concerns about the US commitment to continued support for Ukraine and concerns about US willingness to continue to provide its very important leadership in the world in general.

There were heartening elements – the Europeans are stepping up, for instance, with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on stage at the conference committing to spend 2% of Germany’s GDP on defense . Keep in mind that’s the number three economy in the world now, so that’s a significant development. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that this year 18 of 31 NATO nations will meet the 2% of GDP on defense commitment, marking a steady increase among European members.

Despite Europe very much stepping up – and the EU just before the Munich Security Conference announced an additional 50 billion euros in aid to Ukraine – the additional American support is hanging in the balance in the US Congress, and that is desperately needed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Vice President Kamala Harris, along with members of their delegations, meet for talks at the Munich Security Conference on February 17.

That said, many of the House members who were at the Munich conference, including some of the Republicans that are firm on defense and resistance to Russia, believe that the votes are there and that they’ll be able to get this through.

But the delay, the indecisiveness, the uncertainty certainly was something that weighed on the mood at Munich.

Putin looks at the stalled legislation in the US Congress and the seeming inability to make a decision there to support a fellow democracy that broadly shares our values and principles – however imperfectly, they do – that has been brutally invaded. And then he looks to the US presidential election in November, and he looks at some of the rhetoric in the campaign, and undoubtedly, he draws some hope from that as well.

BERGEN: Who’s winning the war in Ukraine?

PETRAEUS: I’m not sure that either side is winning the war. The Russians obviously have been achieving incremental gains, and the Russians do have the initiative right now, having just forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Avdiivka in the southeast.

There are several other areas in which the Russians are attacking in the east and south and using massive quantities of artillery that generally destroy whatever it is that they’re trying to seize and then using human wave attacks that are extraordinarily costly in terms of casualties, yet they seem to be able to sustain that. Vladimir Putin seems unconcerned by these losses and still seems to be able to continue to generate additional recruits.

One question, of course, is: might there come a point where the Russian people, particularly Russian mothers and fathers and wives, say, ‘Not my son, not my husband anymore’? And there have been modest demonstrations to bring the boys home, although that has certainly not reached substantial quantity nor been particularly influential.

Russia also has a long history of not permitting opposition for any considerable period. Alexey Navalny just died in prison (CNN: the Kremlin has denied allegations of involvement), and a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine earlier in the war was just found shot to death in Spain (CNN: Moscow said it had no information on the matter). It’s essentially removing any illusion that the Russian Federation is anything other than a Stalinist dictatorship .

BERGEN: Are you surprised we’re now two years into this war with no end in sight?

PETRAEUS: Well, not necessarily. While the Ukrainians did demonstrate really quite impressive combat operations in the first year of the war – winning the battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kherson – once the battle lines hardened and the Russians were able to establish defenses, the counteroffensive hinged on the provision of certain weapon systems in a sufficiently timely manner that the Ukrainians would be able to deploy in large numbers. And, obviously, that did not happen.

While the US-led response to the invasion has been very impressive in many respects, there were delays in certain decisions that meant that the Ukrainians did not have US tanks in a timely manner, for example, and that decision led to German delays in approval of the German Leopard tanks. The Ukrainians also didn’t have the Western aircraft that would have provided air support for their ground forces.

The US also needs to supply Ukraine with more long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, ATACMS, which allow the Ukrainians to accurately hit distant targets in Russian-controlled territory.

A Ukrainian serviceman fires a Swedish-made howitzer at Russian positions in the Donetsk region, in December.

So, when you take that into account, I think not a surprise. The Russians have certainly learned certain lessons after seemingly not being able to do that for the first year or more of the war. They have found a way to generate replacement personnel and additional units, and Russia has put its economy on a full-war footing, and this is where the reality enters the picture, as Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine and an economy that’s more than 10 times the size of Ukraine’s .

If US support is forthcoming, I think you will see Ukraine able to at the very least sustain its present position, perhaps even make further progress in the one theater where there have been very impressive Ukrainian achievements – and that’s in the western Black Sea. There, through the use of anti-ship missiles, some produced in Ukraine, some provided to Ukraine, and then the use of maritime drones developed by Ukraine, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has probably sustained about 30% losses . It has largely been pushed out of the western Black Sea and has had to withdraw the bulk of its fleet from the critical port of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, a port that it has used for a couple of centuries.

And this is a critical achievement because it’s allowing Ukraine to export its grain through the western Black Sea to countries that are very dependent on that in North Africa, including particularly Egypt.

BERGEN: Last week the Pentagon gave a background briefing to reporters, and they gave what I thought was a pretty astonishing estimate of the number of Russian forces killed or wounded: 315,000 . What do you make of that?

PETRAEUS: These are just staggering losses. And yet there is a seeming lack of concern in the Kremlin because they seem to be able to continue to recruit by using substantial enlistment bonuses in rural areas. Keep in mind, of course, Putin is shielding the elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg; the burden is not falling on them. It’s falling on these young men in the much more rural areas.

Putin’s certainly in a much better position than was the case, say, a year ago, and that’s obviously concerning. But if the US can get this $60 billion package through and Ukraine makes fundamental decisions about how to increase its force generation – and that is a critical issue – and can continue to make progress with the development of both maritime and air drones, Ukraine, I think, can not only sustain its position but, in certain cases, make progress. But that’s a lot of assumptions. That’s a lot of ifs that all have to come together.

BERGEN: Ukrainian president Zelensky recently fired his army chief . Do you think that’s going to make a difference?

PETRAEUS: I don’t think that this changes the very fundamental issues that are the most significant factors that will determine the way ahead for Ukraine.

Valery Zaluzhny

Related article Read Ukraine army chief's CNN Opinion before he was fired

In particular, Ukraine has to come to grips with how to generate replacement forces, and it has to make a very difficult choice. The Ukrainian parliament has to make some fundamental decisions about recruiting ages, noting that the average age of a Ukrainian soldier on the front lines is not the 18-to-23 that I was privileged to lead in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s over 40 . This is a result of their recruiting policies, and they’re going to have to change that. (Under Ukrainian law, men between the ages of 18 to 26 can’t be drafted , though they can volunteer).

It’s very clear that this is an emotional subject , understandably so, and it will be difficult, but it’s necessary.

BERGEN: If Ukraine loses the war, what’s next? Would Putin feel empowered to attack a NATO country, or have Russia’s losses in this war degraded its ability to invade another country?

PETRAEUS: There’s no question that Putin would not stop at Ukraine. The question is, how long would it take him to regenerate the forces for employment elsewhere? Certainly, Moldova would be in the crosshairs. There are still, after all, 1,500 or so Russian soldiers on the ground in that sliver of land, Transnistria, in Moldova.

His attention could also shift to the Baltic states as well, whose existence he also resents.

His goals all along have been to reassemble as much of the Soviet Union or perhaps the Russian Empire as he possibly can, with him at the helm as the czar.

BERGEN: What’s going on in Ukraine looks a lot like World War I, in the sense that it’s trench warfare, minefields, machine guns. Obviously, there are new techniques, like swarms of armed drones. What does this war look like to you?

PETRAEUS: There are elements of World War I here — the trenches; the belts of defensive fortifications; barbed wire; very, very deep minefields; huge quantities of artillery, especially on the Russian side. You also have the Cold War-era tanks and infantry-fighting vehicles, which is largely what you see on this battlefield.

And then, on top of all this, you have some fairly advanced drones. Some are “suicide” drones. You also have precision missiles in the air and at sea, and you have maritime drones. Electronic warfare is also much more significant. There are activities in cyberspace. There is even involvement of capabilities in outer space that enables command, control, and communications, Starlink satellite communications, of course, being one of those.

Ukrainian emergency services extinguish a fire in a residential building following a missile attack in the capital Kyiv on February 7.

And you have the advent of the enormous transparency that comes from the ubiquitous presence of smartphones, internet access and social media platforms.

So it’s truly different from any previous context for warfare, and it gives us hints as to the future of war that Andrew Roberts and I describe in our book, “ Conflict .”

BERGEN: The Biden administration and Congress have already sent around $75 billion in aid to Ukraine . Why should Americans spend more on funding the Ukrainians?

PETRAEUS: Because it’s in our fundamental national security interest. It’s in the interest of our prosperity and the rules-based international order that we and our allies and partners in the wake of World War II established, which, for all of its imperfections, generally furthered our interests and those of our allies and partners.

Other countries – Russia and its various confederates around the world – are trying to make the world safe for autocracy, not safe for democracy, and our interests and those of our NATO allies and the free world are defended now at the Ukraine-Russia border.

This is not charity. What we do around the world is not out of the goodness of our heart. It’s out of a cold calculation. It is in our national interest to do so, and that if we do not do so, conditions in the world will change in ways that will not be positive for either our national security or our national prosperity.

BERGEN: Do you take at face value former President Donald Trump’s threats to pull the US out of NATO, and what would that do to the alliance?

PETRAEUS: The United States is, at the end of the day, the keystone for NATO capabilities. Even though the NATO secretary general reports that this year 18 of 31 countries will hit the 2% of GDP spending on defense that was agreed upon a decade or so ago, still, the US military is the foundation piece for any NATO operation and for deterrence of would-be aggressors.

So NATO, in many respects, is dependent on decisions made in the Oval Office, and those recent statements were a source of concern at the Munich Security Conference. All Americans who were there were questioned at various times about that, and the fundamental character of NATO and alliance deterrence would obviously be undermined enormously if the US were not to continue to play the role that it has, while led by presidents of either party, since the founding of NATO many decades ago in the wake of World War II.

BERGEN: What do you make of the reports that Russia is developing some kind of anti-satellite weapon , possibly with some nuclear component? Wouldn’t that be pretty dangerous for every country, including the Russians potentially, since they are as dependent on satellite systems as any other country.

PETRAEUS: It would. We should note here, we don’t know whether the nuclear element here is for nuclear power, the way some of our satellites have, or if it’s an actual nuclear weapon – whether a nuclear-powered satellite with some kind of electromagnetic pulse weapon – or if it actually carries a nuclear device that could be used in an anti-satellite role.

Get Our Free Weekly Newsletter

  • Sign up for CNN Opinion’s newsletter
  • Join us on Twitter and Facebook

The real challenge here is that this is enormously destabilizing, because the tens of minutes that the US has right now of warning of some kind of significant nuclear attack would be reduced quite dramatically if the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets that we have, many of them in space, were blinded and decisions had to be made immediately. “Crisis deterrence” would then be dramatically undermined.

So, it’s very dangerous, it’s very ill-advised and it’s also very provocative.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Opinion 7 opinions on the war in Ukraine after one year

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine , Post Opinions is looking back at what has transpired and forward to what is to come.

The selection of opinions below forms a snapshot of that coverage, intended to help you understand the war.

opinion essay war

These charts suggest peace isn’t coming anytime soon

By Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of the Brookings Institution

After gathering data on territory, economics, refugees and more, O’Hanlon, Stelzenmüller and Wessel came to the same conclusion : The war could last for quite some time.

“Pressure to make peace could rise within and outside Ukraine and Russia in 2023 (or thereafter),” they write . “But the data doesn’t suggest that will happen right now.”

How to break the stalemate in Ukraine

By the Editorial Board

The Post’s Editorial Board reviewed the year of war and looked for solutions .

“To thwart Russia and safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, the United States and its European allies have little choice but to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv,” the Editorial Board concluded .

Why Ukraine will win the war

By Mark Hertling, retired Army lieutenant general

Hertling examined five phases of the war and says Ukraine’s forces significantly outperformed Russia’s in each one.

“Ukraine’s armed forces have admirably adapted in each phase of this fight, learning lessons from training they received over the past decade, and from the scars earned on the battlefield itself,” he writes . “And Russia has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do the same.”

How the war will enrich Ukraine when it’s over

By Iuliia Mendel, journalist and former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Sharing a story of a New Year’s Eve delivery she received while hiding in her bathroom from Russian strikes, Mendel shows how she believes the war will make Ukraine stronger when it’s over .

“Today’s war heroes, organizers and businesspeople will be the leaders of tomorrow,” she writes . “The energies unleashed by this war will enrich the country that comes after it.”

What a year of war has revealed of three leaders

By David Ignatius , Post Opinions columnist

Three figures have largely defined the war so far: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden. Ignatius looks at what we’ve learned about each leader over the last year.

“Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s,” Ignatius writes . “But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.”

You can’t understand the war without knowing history

By Timothy Snyder, the Levin professor of history at Yale University

Snyder dives into the contrast between the historical importance of this war and the lack of coursework in history.

“Ukrainian history makes today’s world make more sense,” he writes .

Putin can win only if Hawley-esque isolationists multiply

By George F. Will , Post Opinions columnist

Will homes in on how American politics could affect the war’s result .

“Putin can win only by Ukraine’s allies choosing to lose by not maximizing their moral and material advantages,” he writes . “He is counting on Western publics’ support for Ukraine being brittle, and especially on the multiplication of Josh Hawleys.”

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces , opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.

The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.

The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces .

How you can help: Here are ways those in the United States can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war . Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video .

  • Opinion | Ukraine’s secret weapon: Art February 23, 2024 Opinion | Ukraine’s secret weapon: Art February 23, 2024
  • Opinion | Ukrainians want to know if NATO still wants them February 23, 2024 Opinion | Ukrainians want to know if NATO still wants them February 23, 2024
  • Opinion | Ukraine is at a critical moment. Does the speaker of the House see? February 23, 2024 Opinion | Ukraine is at a critical moment. Does the speaker of the House see? February 23, 2024

opinion essay war

New York University's independent student newspaper, established in 1973.

Washington Square News

A group of students posing for a group photo in front of N.Y.U.’s Bobst Library. Some students on the right are holding a white banner with the red, green and red words “CUT the CONTRACT with STARBUCKS” written on it. A student beside the banner is holding a yellow envelope.

Guest Essay: The war in Ukraine and the danger of World War III

Oppose Putin’s regime without supporting U.S. imperialism and oppose U.S. imperialism without supporting Putin, IYSSE President Karsten Stoeber writes.

A+close-up+image+of+a+blue-and-yellow+Ukrainian+flag.+In+the+blue+part%2C+the+word+%E2%80%9CUkraine%E2%80%9D+is+written+in+Ukrainian+in+yellow+text.+In+the+yellow+part%2C+the+country%E2%80%99s+name+is+written+in+English+in+blue+text.+On+the+right%2C+a+person%E2%80%99s+arm+extends+into+the+frame.+They+are+wearing+a+red-and-black+flannel.

Joshua Becker

(Photo by Joshua Becker)

Karsten Stoeber , Guest Contributor Apr 21, 2022

Karsten Stoeber is the president of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality chapter at NYU.

Millions around the world are shocked by the war in Ukraine. The media openly acknowledges that a nuclear third world war is a real possibility. The war and the economic sanctions against Russia are driving up fuel and food prices, threatening famine in many parts of the world. 

Students and youth must unequivocally oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But opposition to this war must start with an accurate understanding of its origins. 

The U.S. media is now filled with articles feigning outrage at war crimes in Ukraine. Yet the same media had little or nothing to say when, over the past 30 years, the United States invaded and bombed one country after another: Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011, to name but a few examples. According to “ The United States of War ” by David Vine, conservative estimates put the total number of dead from all U.S. wars between 3 and 4 million since 2001 alone.

It is not an excuse of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions to acknowledge that the war was provoked by NATO and, above all, the United States. In addition to wars in the Middle East and Africa, NATO has expanded to the borders of Russia , despite earlier promises to the Kremlin to the contrary. In 2014, Germany and the United States backed the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, with fascist forces such as the political party Svoboda and the far-right organization Right Sector playing a central role . In 2019, the U.S. Congressional Research Service announced a new strategic doctrine : The U.S. military would actively prepare for “great-power competitions” with Russia and China.

Now, the crisis is escalating further. The United States and NATO are funneling billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine. On March 26, U.S. President Joe Biden publicly called for a “regime change” in Moscow — though he clarified that it was a personal opinion, not policy. The United States is  fighting a de facto proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

Young people must oppose the nationalist Putin regime without lining up behind U.S. imperialism, and oppose U.S. imperialism without supporting the Putin regime.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, pundits proclaimed the end of history — but what was the reality? U.S. youth have never known a time when their country was not at war. We have witnessed the economic collapse of 2008, an attempt to overthrow the American constitution, led by Donald Trump and a fascistic mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in nearly 1 million deaths in the United States alone. Now, we are confronted with the danger of a new world war.

This domestic crisis — mirrored in Russia, which also reported more than 700,000 deaths from COVID-19 — has been a significant factor in driving this war. It would not be the first time in history for a government to try to deflect from its domestic crisis through war abroad.

There is no anti-war movement to speak of. How, then, can young people fight? 

I am the president of the IYSSE at NYU, which believes that the only basis for the fight against war is the working class — in the United States and internationally. The last few years have already seen the beginning of significant struggles by the working class. Now, millions have gone through the horrific experience of the pandemic, which has shown the true face of capitalism. 

War must be waged on COVID-19, not Russia. The billions of dollars that go to war must be spent on the social needs of workers and young people. This can only be accomplished through the building of a socialist anti-war movement in the working class that unites workers and young people in the United States, Russia, Ukraine and beyond in a joint struggle for socialism.

I encourage everyone who agrees with this perspective to join the IYSSE at NYU and attend our movement’s International May Day rally .

WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are not the views of the Washington Square News. 

Contact Karsten Stoeber at [email protected] .

opinion essay war

Comments (0)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • International edition
  • Australia edition
  • Europe edition

People protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Trafalgar Square, London on March 6, 2022

The conflict between a just war and peace

Readers respond to articles by Andy Beckett and the Stop the War coalition on how pacifists are being demonised over the war in Ukraine

Andy Beckett ( Pacifists are being elbowed out of British politics just when we need them most, 3 March ) appears to think that we have the choice either to be pacifists or to have to “accept that the world is divided into two camps” – the liberal west and a totalitarian Russia. This is nonsense. It is possible to recognise that Ukraine requires the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the west and a ready supply of western arms and money to defend itself, without believing that the west has suddenly transmogrified into a sainted power bloc, cleansed of all past sins. To choose pacifism in the current circumstances is to opt for a groundless idealism over realpolitik. Ukrainian self-determination needs guns and money.

To stand against the demand to arm Ukraine is to stand for Ukraine’s defeat. If Stop the War believes that there is nothing progressive about Vladimir Putin’s Russia, then it should want his invasion driven back and his regime’s financial lifeline choked off. Laughably, some on the left have even dragged out the old “the main enemy is at home” slogan – as if the UK was actually at war with Russia rather than simply seeking to support Ukraine.

Believing that it’s necessary to oppose Putin’s attempt to drown Ukraine’s right to exist doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to Boris Johnson’s venality or to the proto-fascist leanings of Poland and Hungary, or to alibi the US’s own history of bloody anti-democratic interventions. Right now, though, calling for no sanctions against Russia and no arms to Ukraine means calling for Putin’s victory and its devastating consequences. Orwell was right in 1942 and he would say the same now. Faced with the current circumstances: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.” Nick Moss London

Andy Beckett’s argument is full of contradictions. He claims that Stop the War upholds the right of the Ukrainian people to “self-determination” as well as Russia’s security concerns. What planet is he on? Russia has invaded a peaceful sovereign democracy and is bombing indiscriminately, killing civilians as well as attacking a nuclear power station. Keir Starmer was right to threaten to expel the Labour MPs who signed a Stop the War statement. Let’s hope that none of them ever become foreign secretary. We all want a just peace. June Purvis Portsmouth

It was a relief to read Andy Beckett’s warning about attempts to silence voices for peace. Guns and bombs have always been the foundation of UK foreign policy, and since the country’s acquisition of atom bombs, the two main parties have held the line together. It is pitiful therefore that Labour MPs who expressed their views by signing a letter should be threatened with expulsion ( Report, 2 March ). I long to live in a country that focuses its foreign policy on cooperation to end war and poverty, and to save our species from extinction, whether by nuclear war or climate change. Diana Francis Bath

Andy Beckett’s article has some resonance for me on how we challenge oppression. War is the ultimate oppressive force and those who lead us into it are the ultimate oppressors. Pacifists are activists. We do not stand back in our opposition to oppression, we stand firmly against it. Oppression grows when violence, militarism and war are the mechanisms that we use against it. Stop the War is challenging the oppression of war actively and incisively: it is not sitting on the fence, it is not giving succour to “our enemies”, it is making a stand for human freedom and crying out that another way is possible. Richard Ashwell Wolverhampton

While peace is nearly always preferable to war, sometimes there is a case for a just war, as argued by the Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas. The best example of this was the second world war to defeat fascism. Arguably, the same applies to efforts to defeat Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. I have supported Stop the War previously, when I marched against the Iraq war. But it is misguided on Nato expansion and arming Ukraine. Nato responded to requests from former Soviet satellites to join because of their fears of Russia. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine shows the wisdom of these requests.

By arming Ukraine, Nato can at least give it a fighting chance of defending itself without being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia that would spark a war engulfing the whole of Europe . D r Michael Herron London

Lindsey German’s article ( We at Stop the War condemn the invasion of Ukraine, and warmongers on all sides, 4 March ) is full of the misinterpretation of history. She refers to the breakup of the Warsaw pact and says Nato should have also been dissolved. But the pact was never a partnership of equals. It was a Russian empire. Diplomacy down the barrel of a gun. Nato wasn’t formed to defend against the Soviet Union. It was formed to defend against Russia and its vassals.

As soon as the countries that had been invaded by Russia saw a chance for freedom they ran to Nato and the EU in the rightful belief that one day Russia would try to re-subjugate them. Stop the War restates Russian claims that Nato is a threat, but it poses no threat to Russia, only to Russian imperialist ambitions.

Nobody is a “war enthusiast”. But faced with a bloodthirsty invader, Ukraine has no option other than to defend itself and we have a moral responsibility to assist it.

Should we sit back and allow this atrocity? Putin’s stated objectives allow no room for diplomacy. No country can accept an ultimatum to become the vassal of another. Self-defence is no offence. Jeff Bloom London

  • Vladimir Putin
  • Stop the War coalition

Most viewed

Read our research on: Immigration & Migration | Podcasts | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

What public opinion surveys found in the first year of the war in ukraine.

opinion essay war

Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine a year ago this month. Ahead of the Feb. 24 anniversary of the start of the war, here’s a look back at public opinion findings about the conflict, based on Pew Research Center surveys conducted internationally and in the United States.

Pew Research Center published this collection of survey findings to coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2023. All findings are based on previously published surveys from the Center. Additional information about the original surveys, including their field dates, sample sizes and methodologies, can be found by following the links in the text of this analysis.

International public opinion of President Vladimir Putin and Russia turned much more negative following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Attitudes about Putin and Russia were already negative in many countries before the war in Ukraine. But in spring 2022, shortly after the invasion, a median of 90% of adults across 18 surveyed countries said they had no confidence in Russia’s president to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while a median of just 9% had confidence in him. Ratings for Putin reached record lows in every nation with available trend data.

A chart showing that confidence in Putin reached record lows in many countries surveyed in 2022

Views of Russia itself were broadly negative, too. A median of 85% of adults across the surveyed countries expressed an unfavorable opinion of Russia in spring 2022. In nearly every country with available trend data, there was a double-digit decline in favorable ratings of Russia since 2020, the last time the question was asked.

A bar chart showing that Swedes grew more favorable toward NATO during survey field period of February 2022 to April 2022

International opinions of NATO turned more positive in several countries after the war began. In Germany, for instance, 70% of adults expressed a favorable opinion of NATO in spring 2022, up from 59% the year before. In the United Kingdom, 74% of adults had a positive view of the alliance, up from 66% in 2021.

In one non-NATO member country surveyed – Sweden – views of the alliance became more positive even during the survey field period itself, which coincided with the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Among Swedes surveyed April 5-20, 2022, nearly two months into the war, 27% expressed a very favorable opinion of NATO, up from 18% among Swedes who were surveyed a few weeks earlier.

A chart showing that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Americans became much more likely to see Russia as an enemy of the U.S.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a sharp increase in the share of U.S. adults viewing Russia as an enemy of the United States. In January 2022, with Russian troops massing near the border but not yet crossing into Ukraine, Americans were slightly more likely to see Russia as a competitor of the U.S. than as an enemy (49% vs. 41%). By March 2022, after Russia’s invasion, the tables had turned: Seven-in-ten Americans saw Russia as an enemy, while 24% saw it as a competitor. In both surveys, very few adults perceived Russia as a partner of the U.S. (7% in January 2022, 3% in March 2022).

There has also been a steep rise in the share of Americans with a very unfavorable view of Russia in recent years. Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (69%) expressed a very unfavorable view of Russia in March 2022, up from 41% in 2020. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had a very unfavorable view in March, up from around a third (32%) two years earlier. And 72% of Democrats and Democratic leaners had a very unfavorable opinion, up from 49% in 2020.

A bar chart showing that In March 2022, around seven-in-ten Americans expressed at least some confidence in Zelenskyy

In a survey conducted around a month after the invasion, 72% of Americans said they had at least some confidence in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to do the right thing in world affairs , while just 6% said the same about Putin. Zelenskyy (also spelled Zelensky) inspired confidence from a greater share of the American public than any of the six leaders asked about in the March 2022 survey, including U.S. President Joe Biden. Among the Americans who expressed at least some confidence in Zelenskyy, one-in-three said they had a lot of confidence in him, also far exceeding the shares who said so about the other leaders included in the survey. As for Putin, 92% of Americans said they lacked confidence in him, including 77% who said they had no confidence at all in the Russian president.

opinion essay war

Between March 2022 and January 2023, there was a decline in the share of Americans – especially Republicans – viewing the war as a major threat to U.S. interests . In March 2022, half of U.S. adults, including nearly identical shares of Republicans and Democrats, saw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a major threat to American interests. By this past January, that figure had declined to 35% among Americans overall. While there was a decline in both parties, the decrease among Republicans was steeper: The share of Republicans who perceived the invasion as a major threat to the U.S. fell from 51% around the start of the war to 29% in January 2023.

A bar chart showing that the share of Republicans who say the U.S. gives too much aid to Ukraine has steadily risen since March 2022

Four-in-ten Republicans in the U.S. said in January 2023 that the country is providing too much aid to Ukraine , up from 9% who said so early in the war. As Republicans have become less likely to see the war as a major threat to the U.S., they have become more likely to say the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine. The share of Republicans expressing this view increased from 9% in March 2022 to 17% in May 2022 to 32% in September 2022 to 40% in January 2023. As of January, Americans overall were divided in their views of U.S. assistance to Ukraine: 26% said the U.S. was providing too much support, 31% said it was providing the right amount and 20% said it was providing too little support.

As of January 2023, Americans were more likely to approve than disapprove of the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but attitudes varied widely by party. Among U.S. adults overall, 43% strongly or somewhat approved of the administration’s response to the invasion, while 34% strongly or somewhat disapproved. Around one-in-five adults (22%) were not sure.

A bar chart showing that In January 2023, around six-in-ten Democrats and a quarter of Republicans approved of Biden administration’s response to Russia invading Ukraine

A 61% majority of Democrats approved of the administration’s response to the invasion but more than half of Republicans (54%) disapproved of it. Still, around a quarter of Republicans (27%) had a positive view of the Biden administration’s response – notably greater than the share who approved of the overall way Biden was handling his job as president at the time (6%).

opinion essay war

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings

U.S. veterans have mixed views of Afghanistan withdrawal but are highly critical of how Biden handled it

Two decades later, the enduring legacy of 9/11, majority of u.s. public favors afghanistan troop withdrawal; biden criticized for his handling of situation, after 17 years of war in afghanistan, more say u.s. has failed than succeeded in achieving its goals, the iraq war continues to divide the u.s. public, 15 years after it began, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Op-Comic: The Ukraine war enters its third year

Diaries of War by Nora Krug - intro text and byline

  • Show more sharing options
  • Copy Link URL Copied!

K's Diary, column 1 - top section

Nora Krug is the author of the graphic memoir, “Belonging,” and the illustrator of the visual edition of Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny.” “Diaries of War,” her collection of illustrated interviews from Ukraine and Russia, was published in October 2023.

More to Read

FILE - Ukrainian emergency employees and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. The award-winning film "20 Days in Mariupol" got its premiere in Ukraine on Saturday, June 3, 2023, attended by some Ukrainian medics and security officials who got their first look at the jarring documentary on how Russian forces bombed and blasted their way into the southeastern port city last year. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

Review: Agonizing and essential, ’20 Days in Mariupol’ shows us the war atrocities in Ukraine

July 21, 2023

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy waits for the start of a bilateral meeting with Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. (Yves Herman, Pool Photo via AP)

Article 5: NATO’s common defense pledge that stands in the way of Ukraine’s admission while at war

July 13, 2023

FILE - In this Sept. 22, 2010 file photo, author Elizabeth Gilbert arrives at the European premiere of "Eat, Pray, Love," in Leicester Square, London. Gilbert is delaying publication of a novel "The Snow Forest," set in Russia, after receiving an outpouring of “anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain” from Ukrainian readers who objected to releasing any work about Russia - no matter the content - in the midst of that country’s invasion of Ukraine. (AP Photo/Paul Jeffers, File)

Elizabeth Gilbert criticized for ‘wrongheaded’ decision to pull Russia-set novel

June 13, 2023

A cure for the common opinion

Get thought-provoking perspectives with our weekly newsletter.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 06: Coleman Domingo arrives at the "Rustin" screening and Q&A presented by SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations at NETFLIX on January 06, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Unique Nicole/Getty Images)

Granderson: Your U.S. history class needed a film like ‘Rustin’

Feb. 24, 2024

Sketch-style illustrations of a man sipping from a coffee mug while on the phone.

Opinion: A call can come at any moment. It’s teaching me the importance of ‘one day at a time’

LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 08: Lynda McGee, right, a college counselor, helps students fill FASFA application at Downtown Magnets High School, Los Angeles, CA. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Opinion: The college tuition system is broken. FAFSA headaches are the latest proof

Feb. 23, 2024

VACAVILLE, CA - JANUARY 26: Patricia Mason's, 51, medical bills at her home on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021 in Vacaville, CA. Mason works more than full time over two separate jobs - office administrative work, which she can do at home, and retail, which she can't. Patricia was hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 27 - April 20th of 2020 at NorthBay Medical Center. Her medical bill totaled $1,339,079, which her insurance covered most of it. But she still owes $42,184, which insurance won't cover, and it's gone to collections. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Opinion: California wants to make your healthcare less expensive

CNN values your feedback

Two years of war for russia has plunged the country ever deeper into darkness.

Matthew Chance

Two years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine , I was among the many long-time observers of the Kremlin who got it wrong.

Few could fathom why Vladimir Putin, Russia’s calculating leader, would embark on such a risky military adventure, especially when the mere threat of a Russian invasion was already yielding results.

In June the previous year, as Russian forces massed near Ukraine, US President Joe Biden met Putin at a superpower-style summit, describing the US and Russia as “two great powers” elevating the Russian leader after previous US administrations had sought to downplay Russia’s influence.

In the days before the 2022 invasion, Washington offered a “pragmatic evaluation” of Moscow’s security concerns, signalling openness to compromise.

Pitching Russian forces against one of the region’s biggest standing armies seemed uncharacteristically reckless and, therefore, unlikely.

There were others, though, who rightly saw the invasion as inevitable, better reading the Kremlin’s intentions, and confidently predicting a swift Russian victory at the hands of Moscow’s vastly superior forces.

Two years on, I like to think that those of us who doubted the Kremlin’s resolve were wrong for the right reasons.

What Moscow still euphemistically calls a Special Military Operation has been a bloodbath of catastrophic proportions, unseen in Europe for generations. Even conservative estimates put the number of dead and injured at hundreds of thousands of people on each side. Small gains, such as the recent capture of Avdiivka, have come at enormous cost.

A view from a drone of the Avdiivka coke and chemical plant recently captured by Russian troops in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on February 20.

Russia’s once revered military has shown itself painfully unprepared and vulnerable to modern weapons in the hands of a determined Ukrainian resistance. Even if the war ends tomorrow, it is likely to take many years for its strength and numbers to recover.

And the past two years of brutal war have twisted and distorted Russia internally too.

Hundreds of thousands of its citizens have fled abroad to avoid conscription. Frustrations with the way the war was being fought provoked an armed uprising in which gun-toting Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, posing an unprecedented challenge to the Kremlin’s authority.

Yet Oleksandr

Related video Ukrainian fighter recounts the challenges and triumphs of surviving every major battle

International disdain has made Russia the most heavily sanctioned country in the world. Even President Putin has been indicted for war crimes at the Hague.

And now Putin’s most vocal critic – Alexey Navalny – is dead. Amid a broader crackdown on dissent, this country has plunged further into isolation and darkness.

Take a longer view, and the direction of travel seems tragically clear.

I was in Chechnya when, in 2000, a newly installed President Putin brought that rebellious Russian region to heel, unleashing a relentless Russian military. We will bomb them in the outhouse, he remarked, in a crude but popular refrain.

In 2004, a leading Russia journalist, Anna Politikovskaya, was murdered, on Putin’s birthday. Her brave dispatches from Chechnya struck a chord. Other critics were silenced at home and abroad.

Ukrainian servicemen pile up earthbags to build a fortification not far from the town of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on February 17.

By 2008, Putin was intervening in neighbouring Georgia, carving out pro-Russian regions from the Georgian state. Before the territory of Crimea was annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian forces had for years successfully propped up the Syrian regime in that country’s own brutal crackdown on rebellion, despite international condemnation.

But February 24, 2022, was a watershed.

It’s not just that Putin miscalculated in his ambition to conquer Ukraine, although what was meant as a limited campaign is very much now an open-ended war.

Rather, his full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the moment Putin finally abandoned all semblance of cooperation with the West, and all pretence that dissent and criticism inside this great nation would be tolerated.

And there is currently little sign of any change in course.

In fact, two years into his Special Military Operation, Putin is tightening his grip on power with opponents silenced and elections in March set to confirm his fifth presidential term.

Privately, many Russians remain quietly hopeful that there will, one day, be a change in course. But few believe it is likely to be now or even soon.

').concat(a,'

Show all

'.concat(e,"

'.concat(i,"

\n Find more topics that matter to you on your Follow page. Browse, add, or remove topics for a\n personalized experience.\n

",16,{name:"compare",hash:{},data:o,blockParams:r,loc:{start:{line:12,column:78},end:{line:13,column:31}}}),{name:"if",hash:{},fn:l.program(3,o,0,r,t),inverse:l.noop,data:o,blockParams:r,loc:{start:{line:12,column:72},end:{line:13,column:81}}}))?c:"")+'">'+s(i(null!=(c=r[0][0])?u(c,"label"):c,a))+"

opinion essay war

How to Write War Essay: Russia Ukraine War

opinion essay war

Understanding the Purpose and Scope of a War Essay

A condition of armed conflict between nations or between groups living in one nation is known as war. Sounds not like much fun, does it? Well, conflicts have been a part of human history for thousands of years, and as industry and technology have developed, they have grown more devastating. As awful as it might seem, a war typically occurs between a country or group of countries against a rival country to attain a goal through force. Civil and revolutionary wars are examples of internal conflicts that can occur inside a nation.

Your history class could ask you to write a war essay, or you might be personally interested in learning more about conflicts, in which case you might want to learn how to write an academic essay about war. In any scenario, we have gathered valuable guidance on how to organize war essays. Let's first examine the potential reasons for a conflict before moving on to the outline for a war essay.

  • Economic Gain - A country's desire to seize control of another country's resources frequently starts conflicts. Even when the proclaimed goal of a war is portrayed to the public as something more admirable, most wars have an economic motivation at their core, regardless of any other possible causes.
  • Territorial Gain - A nation may determine that it requires additional land for habitation, agriculture, or other uses. Additionally, the territory might serve as buffer zones between two violent foes.
  • Religion - Religious disputes can stem from extremely profound issues. They may go dormant for many years before suddenly resurfacing later.
  • Nationalism - In this sense, nationalism simply refers to the act of violently subjugating another country to demonstrate the country's superiority. This frequently manifests as an invasion.
  • Revenge - Warfare can frequently be motivated by the desire to punish, make up for, or simply exact revenge for perceived wrongdoing. Revenge has a connection to nationalism as well because when a nation has been wronged, its citizens are inspired by patriotism and zeal to take action.
  • Defensive War - In today's world, when military aggression is being questioned, governments will frequently claim that they are fighting in a solely protective manner against a rival or prospective aggressor and that their conflict is thus a 'just' conflict. These defensive conflicts may be especially contentious when conducted proactively, with the basic premise being that we are striking them before they strike us.

How to Write War Essay with a War Essay Outline

Just like in compare and contrast examples and any other forms of writing, an outline for a war essay assists you in organizing your research and creating a good flow. In general, you keep to the traditional three-part essay style, but you can adapt it as needed based on the length and criteria of your school. When planning your war paper, consider the following outline:

War Essay Outline

Introduction

  • Definition of war
  • Importance of studying wars
  • Thesis statement

Body Paragraphs

  • Causes of the War
  • Political reasons
  • Economic reasons
  • Social reasons
  • Historical reasons
  • Major Players in the War
  • Countries and their leaders
  • Military leaders
  • Allies and enemies
  • Strategies and Tactics
  • Military tactics and techniques
  • Strategic planning
  • Weapons and technology
  • Impact of the War
  • On the countries involved
  • On civilians and non-combatants
  • On the world as a whole
  • Summary of the main points
  • Final thoughts on the war
  • Suggestions for future research

If you found this outline template helpful, you can also use our physics help for further perfecting your academic assignments.

Begin With a Relevant Hook

A hook should be the focal point of the entire essay. A good hook for an essay on war can be an interesting statement, an emotional appeal, a thoughtful question, or a surprising fact or figure. It engages your audience and leaves them hungry for more information.

Follow Your Outline

An outline is the single most important organizational tool for essay writing. It allows the writer to visualize the overall structure of the essay and focus on the flow of information. The specifics of your outline depend on the type of essay you are writing. For example, some should focus on statistics and pure numbers, while others should dedicate more space to abstract arguments.

How to Discuss Tragedy, Loss, and Sentiment

War essays are particularly difficult to write because of the terrible nature of war. The life is destroyed, the loved ones lost, fighting, death, great many massacres and violence overwhelm, and hatred for the evil enemy, amongst other tragedies, make emotions run hot, which is why sensitivity is so important. Depending on the essay's purpose, there are different ways to deal with tragedy and sentiment.

The easiest one is to stick with objective data rather than deal with the personal experiences of those who may have been affected by these events. It can be hard to remain impartial, especially when writing about recent deaths and destruction. But it is your duty as a researcher to do so.

However, it’s not always possible to avoid these issues entirely. When you are forced to tackle them head-on, you should always be considerate and avoid passing swift and sweeping judgment.

Summing Up Your Writing

When you have finished presenting your case, you should finish it off with some sort of lesson it teaches us. Armed conflict is a major part of human nature yet. By analyzing the events that transpired, you should be able to make a compelling argument about the scale of the damage the war caused, as well as how to prevent it in the future.

Tired of Looming Deadlines?

Get the help you need from our expert writers to ace your next assignment!

Popular War Essay Topics

When choosing a topic for an essay about war, it is best to begin with the most well-known conflicts because they are thoroughly recorded. These can include the Cold War or World War II. You might also choose current wars, such as the Syrian Civil War or the Russia and Ukraine war. Because they occur in the backdrop of your time and place, such occurrences may be simpler to grasp and research.

To help you decide which war to write about, we have compiled some facts about several conflicts that will help you get off to a strong start.

Reasons for a War

Russia Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin started the Russian invasion in the early hours of February 24 last year. According to him. the Ukrainian government had been committing genocide against Russian-speaking residents in the eastern Ukraine - Donbas region since 2014, calling the onslaught a 'special military operation.'

The Russian president further connected the assault to the NATO transatlantic military alliance commanded by the United States. He said the Russian military was determined to stop NATO from moving farther east and establishing a military presence in Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union, until its fall in 1991.

All of Russia's justifications have been rejected by Ukraine and its ally Western Countries. Russia asserted its measures were defensive, while Ukraine declared an emergency and enacted martial law. According to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the administration's objective is not only to repel offensives but also to reclaim all Ukrainian land that the Russian Federation has taken, including Crimea.

Both sides of the conflict accuse the other of deploying indiscriminate force, which has resulted in many civilian deaths and displacements. According to current Ukraine news, due to the difficulty of counting the deceased due to ongoing combat, the death toll is likely far higher. In addition, countless Ukrainian refugees were compelled to leave their homeland in search of safety and stability abroad.

Diplomatic talks have been employed to try to end the Ukraine-Russia war. Several rounds of conversations have taken place in various places. However, the conflict is still raging as of April 2023, and there is no sign of a truce.

World War II

World War II raged from 1939 until 1945. Most of the world's superpowers took part in the conflict, fought between two military alliances headed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, and the Axis Powers, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.

If you'd like to explore it more in-depth, consider using our history essay service for a World War 2 essay pdf sample!

After World War II, a persistent political conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies became known as the Cold War. It's hard to say who was to blame for the cold war essay. American citizens have long harbored concerns about Soviet communism and expressed alarm over Joseph Stalin's brutal control of his own nation. On their side, the Soviets were angry at the Americans for delaying their participation in World War II, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of Russians, and for America's long-standing unwillingness to recognize the USSR as a genuine member of the world community.

Vietnam War

If you're thinking about writing the Vietnam War essay, you should know that it was a protracted military battle that lasted in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. The North Vietnamese communist government fought South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States, in the lengthy, expensive, and contentious Vietnam War. The ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union exacerbated the issue. The Vietnam War claimed the lives of more than 3 million individuals, more than half of whom were Vietnamese civilians.

American Civil War

Consider writing an American Civil War essay where the Confederate States of America, a grouping of eleven southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861, and the United States of America battled each other. If you're wondering what caused the civil war, you should know that the long-standing dispute about the legitimacy of slavery is largely responsible for how the war started.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

After over a century, the Israel-Palestine conflict has evolved into one of the most significant and current problems in the Middle East. A war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people destroyed their homes and gave rise to terrorist organizations that still hold the region hostage. Simply described, it is a conflict between two groups of people for ownership of the same piece of land. One already resided there, while the other was compelled to immigrate to this country owing to rising antisemitism and later settled there. For Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as for the larger area, the war continues to have substantial political, social, and economic repercussions.

The Syrian Civil War

Pro-democracy protests broke out in southern Deraa in March 2011 due to upheavals against oppressive leaders in neighboring nations. When the Syrian government employed lethal force to quell the unrest, widespread protests calling for the president's resignation broke out.

The country entered a civil war as the violence quickly increased. After hundreds of rebel organizations emerged, the fight quickly expanded beyond a confrontation between Syrians supporting or opposing Mr. Assad. Everyone believes a political solution is necessary, even though it doesn't seem like it will soon.

Russia-Ukraine War Essay Sample

With the Russian-Ukrainian war essay sample provided below from our paper writing experts, you can gain more insight into structuring a flawless paper.

Why is there a war between Russia and Ukraine?

Final Words

To understand our past and the present, we must study conflicts since they are a product of human nature and civilization. Our graduate essay writing service can produce any kind of essay you want, whether it is about World War II, the Cold War, or another conflict. Send us your specifications with your ' write my essay ' request, and let our skilled writers help you wow your professor!

Having Hard Time Writing on Wars?

From the causes and consequences of wars to the strategies and tactics used in battle, our team of expert writers can provide you with a high-quality essay!

Related Articles

Satire Essay

BestEssay

How To Write an Essay on War Writing Prompts

author

Writing an impressive piece of paper is always a challenging task, but it becomes even harder if you have to address a delicate and controversial topic, such as war. The thing is that wars are usually fought for some higher purpose, and it is not always easy to find the phrases to express your support or disagreement with a certain conflict.

But at our essay writing service , the experience taught us how to approach war-related essays with all due attention and responsibility. This is extremely important for a number of reasons:

  • You need to be able to find the right words to express your own opinion on the matter
  • Presenting different points of view is a must
  • It is mandatory to be respectful of other people's opinions, even if you don't share them
  • You need to be able to properly structure your thoughts and present them in a coherent manner
  • You must never be lopsided in your argumentation

Now that we got that out of the way, it is time to focus on how to write an essay on war. The good news is that there are a lot of war essay writing prompts you can use to get started. So, if you are looking for some ideas on how to write an essay on war, check out the following topics and writing prompts.

What is War Essay

A war essay is an essay that covers the topics of warfare and military history. It can be either informative or argumentative in nature, depending on what you want to focus on. Additionally, a war essay can also discuss the causes and effects of war, as well as different types of warfare.

However, there are many things that can make writing a war essay difficult.

For one, you need to have a strong understanding of the history and causes of the war you are discussing. You must also be able to effectively communicate your thoughts and ideas in writing. Finally, you will need to ensure that your essay is well-organized and flows smoothly from beginning to end.

Types of Essay You Can Use For War Topic

As we mentioned earlier, there are different types of essays you can use to write about war. But before you pick the right one for your academic paper, it is necessary to understand exactly what each type of essay entails. We will go through the five most common war essay types here:

  • An informative essay - An informative essay is an objective piece of writing that covers the basics of a particular topic. When writing an informative war essay, your goal is to educate your reader about the subject matter. You will need to provide accurate and up-to-date information about the topic, as well as present it in a clear and concise manner. The purpose of this essay is to give readers a general overview of the subject matter.
  • The cause and effect essay - Cause and effect essays analyze the reasons why a particular event or situation occurred, as well as the resulting effects. When writing a cause and effect war essay, you will need to focus on the causes and effects of a specific conflict. You can discuss the political, social, or economic causes of war, as well as the physical and psychological effects it has on those involved. For example, you could discuss the causes and effects of World War II or the Vietnam War.
  • An argumentative essay - Argumentative essays are a type of paper that presents a debatable opinion on a particular issue. When writing an argumentative war essay, you will need to take a stance on a specific aspect of warfare and support your position with evidence. You will need to consider both sides of the issue and present a convincing argument for your point of view. Additionally, you must be able to refute any opposing arguments.
  • Comparative essay - A comparative essay is an essay in which you compare and contrast two or more things. This can be done by analyzing similarities and differences between two or more wars or by comparing and contrasting the causes and effects of different wars. When writing a comparative war essay, you will need to consider both the similarities and differences between the topics you are discussing. It is the only way to make a well-balanced comparative essay.
  • Persuasive essay - A persuasive essay is an essay that attempts to convince the reader to agree with a particular opinion or point of view. The idea is to write a piece of paper that sounds so credible that no one can dispute it. In such circumstances, it is highly recommended to use rhetorical tricks. Appeals to emotion, authority, and logic are the most common persuasive strategies.

Don't forget that these are just a few of the common types of essays you can use to write about war. There are other essay types that can also be used, such as definition essays, descriptive essays, and process essays. Ultimately, the type of essay you use will depend on your specific topic and what you want to focus on.

War Essay Outline

Let's assume you've chosen to write an informative essay about the causes and effects of World War II. The first step in crafting your essay will be to create an outline. This will help you organize your thoughts and ideas and ensure that your essay flows smoothly from beginning to end.

Here is a basic outline for an informative war essay:

  • Introduction . Introduce the topic of your essay and provide background information on the conflict you will be discussing. A given topic stretches over many years, so you should limit your focus to a specific aspect of the war. It can be something like the political causes, the social effects, or the economic consequences.
  • Body paragraphs . This is the core of your paper. Each section should focus on a specific cause or effect of the war. The idea is to present your thoughts and support your thesis statement with evidence. For example, if you are discussing the political causes of World War II, your body paragraphs could focus on specific events like the Treaty of Versailles or the rise of Adolf Hitler.
  • Conclusion . Remind readers of your thesis statement and summarize the main points of your essay. Discuss the larger implications of the war and how it has affected the world today. You might also want to discuss the lessons that can be learned from the conflict.

How to Write a War Essay: A Short Guide

War is one of the most complex and brutal phenomena in human history. For many people, war is a fascinating subject, full of dramatic stories and lessons about human nature. This short guide offers some tips on how to write a war essay that will engage your reader and offer new insights into this complex subject.

First, it is important to choose a specific focus for your essay. Trying to elaborate on the entire history of the war would be impossible and would likely result in a scattered and superficial paper. It is better to focus on a specific conflict or aspect of war. This will give you the opportunity to go into depth and explore the subject in greater detail.

Once you have picked your focus, you need to do some research. In addition to reading history books, there are many other sources that can provide valuable information for your essay. These include first-hand accounts from participants in the conflict, as well as newspaper articles, government documents, and academic journals.

When you are writing your essay, it is important to maintain a clear and logical structure. Your paper should have a strong introduction that states your thesis, as well as body paragraphs that support your argument with evidence. Remember to back up your statements and claims with specific examples, and conclude your essay with a thought-provoking conclusion.

Finally, keep in mind that war is a controversial topic, and there are many different interpretations of events. When presenting your own view, be respectful of other perspectives and avoid making sweeping statements about right and wrong. By taking these aspects and factors into account, you can write an essay on the war that will offer a fresh perspective on this complex and fascinating subject.

What to Write About in Essay on War

War is an essential topic of discussion and contemplation for many reasons. It is a reality that has shaped our world throughout history and defined the course of nations. It is also a complex subject with a multitude of causes and effects. When writing an essay on war, there are many different angles that you can take.

You could discuss the history of war and its impact on civilization. You could examine the causes of war, such as economic or political interests or religious or ideological differences. You could also explore the personal experiences of soldiers and civilians caught in the midst of conflict.

Whatever direction you choose to take, make sure to back up your arguments with evidence and thoughtful analysis. By doing so, you can create a well-rounded and insightful essay on war.

How To Choose a War Essay Topic

Picking a war essay topic is difficult simply because you have so many ideas to choose from. You can discuss the history of war, the causes of war, and the effects of war, or you can concentrate on a specific conflict. You can also choose to write about a personal experience with war, either your own or that of someone you know. We will help you out by presenting a few interesting ideas.

Essay on War in Ukraine

War in Ukraine is the most recent military conflict in the world - it lasts some 150 days. However, the war already has extreme consequences for the global economy, social life, and political situation. Hundreds of people died, and millions became refugees. So, if you want to write a paper that is more relevant than any other, don't hesitate to write an essay on the war in Ukraine. We can suggest a few interesting aspects of the topic:

  • The History Of The Conflict And The Events That Led To It
  • How The War Has Affected Ukraine And Its People
  • The Power Of Russia: How Long Can It Keep Fighting?
  • The Role Of NATO In The Ukrainian War
  • The Future Of Ukraine In Light Of The War

Essay About World War 1

World War 1 is one of the most significant events in human history. It began in 1914 and ended in 1918. The war saw two sides: the Allied Powers, which included Britain, France, Russia, and the United States, and the Central Powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

It resulted in the death of several million persons, as well as the downfall of empires. It also set foundations for the new era of global conflict, characterized by the rise of nationalism and the use of modern technology in warfare. If you are interested in writing about World War 1, here are a few potential topics:

  • The Causes of World War 1
  • The Battle of the Somme: Why Was It So Bloody?
  • The Impact of World War 1 on Civilian populations
  • Warfare in World War 1: Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Tank Battles
  • The Treaty of Versailles: What Did It Achieve?

Essay About World War 2

World War 2 was the biggest and most destructive conflict in human history. It began in 1939 and lasted for six years, involving over 30 countries and resulting in the deaths of over 60 million people. The cause of the war was the rise of Nazi Germany and its aggressive expansionist policies.

WW2 resulted in the death of millions of people, as well as the destruction of entire cities, while Holocaust is one of the most tragic events of this war. The war also had a profound impact on the course of world history, leading to the rise of new nations and the fall of others. If you are interested in writing about World War 2, here are a few potential topics:

  • The Causes of World War 2
  • The Battle of Stalingrad: Why Was It So Important?
  • The Holocaust: How Could It Have Happened?
  • D-Day: The Turning Point of the War
  • The Atomic Bomb: Was It Necessary?
  • The Holocaust: The Tragic Fate of European Jewry

Essay About The Vietnam War

This war took place from 1955 to 1975 and is considered one of the most controversial conflicts of the 20th century. This event was a long and costly conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam against the government of South Vietnam and their main ally, the United States.

More than 2.5 million Americans served in Vietnam, and more than 58,000 were killed. The war had a profound impact on the course of world history, as well as on the lives of those who were involved in it. If you are interested in writing about the Vietnam War, here are a few potential topics:

  • The History of the Vietnam War
  • The Causes of the Vietnam War
  • The American Involvement in the War
  • How Did the Vietnam War Impact Local Civilians
  • The Legacy of the Vietnam War

Civil War Essay

A civil war is a military conflict between different factions within the same country. Civil wars can be caused by political, social, or economic differences, and they often have an unprecedented influence on the course of world history. If you are interested in writing about a civil war, here are a few potential topics:

  • The American Civil War
  • The Russian Civil War
  • The Spanish Civil War
  • The Chinese Civil War
  • The Lebanese Civil War

Cold War Essay

The Cold War was a period when the world was divided between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The war was characterized by a lack of direct military conflict, as well as by an intense arms race and a series of proxy wars. If you are interested in writing about the Cold War, here are a few potential topics:

  • The Causes of the Cold War
  • The Cuban Missile Crisis
  • The Fall of the Berlin Wall
  • The Arms Race: The Danger of Mutual Destruction
  • The proxy wars of the Cold War: Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan
  • How did the Cold War shape the world we live in today?

All those warfare events and corresponding topics deserve to be elaborated on in separate essays as each of them is very important on its own. That's why you won't make a mistake if you choose any of the topics mentioned above.

It's impossible to find a single person on Earth who understands the phenomenon of war inside out. This is because war is such a complicated, multi-faceted thing. With this in mind, when you're looking for a topic to write about in your war essay, it's important to choose something specific to focus on. This way, you can really delve into the details and offer new insights into this complex subject.

But even if a small topic sounds too intimidating, don't be afraid to give it a try. The writing process is easier than you might expect, while you can always order an essay and get a high-quality paper in record time. So, what are you waiting for? Pick your topic and start writing your war essay today!

  • free Outline $5
  • free Unlimited Amendments $30
  • free Title Page $5
  • free Bibliography $15
  • free Formatting $10
  • 25+ years of experience in the custom writing market
  • Satisfied and returning customers
  • A wide range of services
  • 6-hour delivery available
  • Money-back guarantee
  • 100% privacy guaranteed
  • A professional team of experienced paper writers
  • Only custom-written papers
  • Free amendments upon request
  • Constant access to your paper's writer
  • Free extras by request

weaccept

We use cookies. What does it mean? OK

Become a Writer Today

Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

War is atrocious and there is an almost universal rule that we should be prevented; if you are writing essays about war, read our helpful guide.

Throughout history, war has driven human progress. It has led to the dissolution of oppressive regimes and the founding of new democratic countries. There is no doubt that the world would not be as it is without the many wars waged in the past.

War is waged to achieve a nation or organization’s goals, but what is the actual cost of progress? War has taken, and continues to take, countless lives. It is and is very costly in terms of resources as well. From the American Revolution to World Wars I and II to the Crusades and Hundred Years’ War of antiquity, wars throughout history have been bloody, brutal, and disastrous. 

If you are writing essays about war, look at our top essay examples below.

1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson

2. essay on war and peace (author unknown), 3. the impacts of war on global health by sarah moore.

  • 4.  The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

5. ​​Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary

5 prompts for essays about war, 1. is war justified, 2. why do countries go to war, 3. the effects of war, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning war, 5. reflecting on a historical war.

“Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.”

Ferguson disputes the popular belief that war is inherent to human nature, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries. Many archaeologists use the very same evidence to support the opposing view. Evidence reveals many instances where war was waged, but not fought. In the minds of Ferguson and many others, humanity may be predisposed to conflict and violence, but not war, as many believe. 

“It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.”

This essay provides an interesting perspective on war; other than the typical motivations for war, such as the desire to achieve one’s goals; the author writes that war disrupts the monotony of peace and gives participants a sense of excitement and uncertainty. In addition, it instills the spirit of heroism and bravery in people. However, the author does not dispute that war is evil and should be avoided as much as possible. 

“War forces people to flee their homes in search of safety, with the latest figures from the UN estimating that around 70 million people are currently displaced due to war. This displacement can be incredibly detrimental to health, with no safe and consistent place to sleep, wash, and shelter from the elements. It also removes a regular source of food and proper nutrition. As well as impacting physical health, war adversely affects the mental health of both those actively involved in conflict and civilians.”

Moore discusses the side effects that war has on civilians. For example, it diverts resources used on poverty alleviation and infrastructure towards fighting. It also displaces civilians when their homes are destroyed, reduces access to food, water, and sanitation, and can significantly impact mental health, among many other effects. 

4.   The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

“The damage done by war-related trauma can never be undone. We can, however, help reduce its long-term impacts, which can span generations. When we reach within ourselves to discover our humanity, it allows us to reach out to the innocent children and remind them of their resilience and beauty. Trauma can make or break us as individuals, families, and communities.”

In their essay, the authors explain how war can affect children. Children living in war-torn areas expectedly witness a lot of violence, including the killings of their loved ones. This may lead to the inability to sleep properly, difficulty performing daily functions, and a speech impediment. The authors write that trauma cannot be undone and can ruin a child’s life.  

“The sociologist Charles Tilly has argued that war and the nation state are inextricably linked. War has been crucial for the formation of the nation state, and remains crucial for its continuation. Anthony Giddens similarly views a link between the internal pacification of states and their external violence. It may be that, if we want a durable peace, a peace built on something other than war, we need to consider how to construct societies based on something other than the nation state and its monopoly of violence.”

This essay discusses the irony that war is waged to achieve peace. Many justify war and believe it is inevitable, as the world seems to balance out an era of peace with another war. However, others advocate for total pacifism. Even in relatively peaceful times, organizations and countries have been carrying out “shadow wars” or engaging in conflict without necessarily going into outright war. Cleary cites arguments made that for peace to indeed exist by itself, societies must not be built on the war in the first place. 

Many believe that war is justified by providing a means to peace and prosperity. Do you agree with this statement? If so, to what extent? What would you consider “too much” for war to be unjustified? In your essay, respond to these questions and reflect on the nature and morality of war. 

Wars throughout history have been waged for various reasons, including geographical domination, and disagreement over cultural and religious beliefs. In your essay, discuss some of the reasons different countries go to war, you can look into the belief systems that cause disagreements, oppression of people, and leaders’ desire to conquer geographical land. For an interesting essay, look to history and the reasons why major wars such as WWI and WWII occurred.

Essays about war: The effects of war

In this essay, you can write about war’s effects on participating countries. You can focus on the impact of war on specific sectors, such as healthcare or the economy. In your mind, do they outweigh the benefits? Discuss the positive and negative effects of war in your essay. To create an argumentative essay, you can pick a stance if you are for or against war. Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both.

Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as “collateral damage,” keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners. For your essay, choose an issue that may arise when fighting a war and determine whether or not it is genuinely “unforgivable” or “unacceptable.” Are there instances where it is justified? Be sure to examples where this issue has arisen before.

Humans have fought countless wars throughout history. Choose one significant war and briefly explain its causes, major events, and effects. Conduct thorough research into the period of war and the political, social, and economic effects occurred. Discuss these points for a compelling cause and effect essay.

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”If you still need help, our guide to grammar and punctuation explains more.

opinion essay war

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

View all posts

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

Sample details

  • Behaviorism

Related Topics

  • Pearl Harbor
  • Arbitration
  • World War II
  • Just war theory
  • World War I
  • War on Terror
  • Trench warfare

Vietnam War

My View and Opinion on War

My View and Opinion on War

All kinds of wars take their toll on the nations who chooses to engage in them. War, in my own point of view, never was and never should be the best solution for conflicts, disagreements, or political preferences between people and nations. Wars, either big or small create such a huge impact in the social, economical, and political aspect of a nation. It is so powerful it can disrupt the stability, unity and harmony of even the strongest nation.

Our world today has evolved so much from the barbaric tendencies of man that are evidenced from the historic accounts of the ancient history. According to Pauling (1983), “We are living through that unique epoch in the history of civilization when war will cease to be the means of settling great world problems”.  As such, it is only right and fitting that diplomacy is applied, and not armed conflicts, whenever disagreements arise. A lot of things can be resolved through negotiations, peace talks, and bargaining. Differences can be ironed out and people of different race, religion, and idealism can all live in agreement as they should. It is under this concept that the United Nations was established, and their main task is to ensure peace and unity among nations. If the resources are used correctly, the organization undoubtedly will be a good mediator for conflicts between countries. And with them functioning impartially, there won’t be any need for bloodshed and the loss of innocent lives ever again.

ready to help you now

Without paying upfront

Wars tend to treat soldiers, men, women, and even innocent children less of a person than they truly are. During a war, the television, radio, and the Internet are filled with news reports of war casualties, captives, and tortured soldiers. For a nation at war, it is always the poor soldiers that are used as pawns to fight in the battlefield. Yes, these soldiers do have a sworn duty to protect their country and its people. But like us, they have families of their own too. These soldiers are fathers, brothers, and sons too – and somebody back home is waiting for them. Unfortunately though, when war is over, there will definitely be families left broken, shattered, and crushed, and all of it is supposed to be all for the glory of the nation.

And so in line with this, it is never right and acceptable to torture captured soldiers, if only for the mere fact that these soldiers only do as they are told. Putting them to blame for everything that has transpired during the war is very unreasonable. Boot (2002) stated that torture, as a war crime, is a crime against humanity; and that the effects of the physical and mental pain inflicted to the person subjected to torture will remain inside them and in their subconscious for such a long time.

The need of a big and strong nation to showcase their military supremacy and world dominance has always been a factor why wars still occur. Ripka (1961) had long analyzed that engaging in war is a way for the strong nations to gain supremacy over the weaker ones. Accordingly, when a certain nation suddenly becomes a subject of oppression, it becomes hard to them to resist taking up their arms and retaliate to their enemy. But even so, there are several other peaceful ways to resolve all the issues they are facing. And as civilized citizens, the said peaceful ways of solving the problem should always be the first option. It is important that we all understand that after all, there is no real winner in a war. Every nation, every person, even the seemingly victorious ones, are all left on the losing end after the storm had died down.

Wars expose a nation into an unnecessary trail of grief and hardships. Even big, powerful, and rich countries are crippled by the easiest and quickest war they had ever fought. If a country engages in a war, their economic trade, foreign relations, and social balance all suffer – and it could take several years to restore them all. The wages of war is not even worth the victories associated with it. Wars are for nations who still believe that force and dominance are a solution. And it is my hope that their number should diminish over time.

Boot, M. (2002). Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes: Nullum Crimen Sine Lege and the Subject Matter. Belguim: Intersentia

Ripka, H. (1961). Eastern Europe in the Post-war World. Michigan: Praeger.

Pauling, L. (1983). No More War! Michigan: Dodd, Mead.

Cite this page

https://graduateway.com/my-views-on-war/

You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers

Check more samples on your topics

An opinion on the history of the war of 1812.

War of 1812

The post-war period in the United States, known as the 'Era of Good Feelings,' experienced significant growth and progress. It was characterized by American nationalism, unity, and economic development. However, this era's significance extended beyond mere victory; it represented Britain's efforts to maintain land and conscript American sailors into their navy while acting as a

The Vietnam War – Perspective of War (How the war is viewed)

The Vietnam War can be viewed in two different perspectives.  One of them is a struggle by the local population against a foreign (imperialist) power, assisted by their locally-installed puppet leaders. In its history, Vietnam has been the battleground of conquerors, particularly its powerful to the north, China.  Yet, despite being invaded several times, the

My Opinion About Chowan University

Chowan University             People have different preferences in life. Some would opt for the more traditional way of being successful through working independently. On the other hand, there were some who would opt to render their services to those in dire needs.             My admission to the Chowan University would come as an advantage of many sorts.

Opinion on Future Challenges

                                               Opinion on Future Challenges             My generation will face so many different challenges, ranging from war to global poverty, from the impact of technology to the scarcity of natural resources, that it is difficult to assign a single challenge as most crucial or important.  However, because the challenges of the twenty-first century, whether economic or

Opinion of Secondary School Teachers on Sex Education

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND STUDY Sex education, broadly defined; any instruction in the processes and consequences of sexual activity, ordinarily given to adolescent . Today the term usually refers to classroom lesson about sex taught in primary and secondary schools. {Redmond,W. A 2008}. Illinois sex education advisory board (2002) defined sex education as a cooperative effort;

The Influence of Constant Television Viewing on a Person’s Opinion

Gerbner and Gross (1976) proposed the Cultivation theory to assess the impact of watching television on the minds and way of thinking of the television viewers. On the other hand, social sciences define framing as a combination of ideas, concepts, images and theoretical perspectives of individuals' organization, perception, and communication about a fact (Price et

Latish’s Opinion on the Atrocities of German Soldiers During the Time of Hitler

Latisha made an important acknowledgment in mentioning, “atrocities were devoted due to the Germans were so cruel, and aggressive during the time Hitler was in power.” Fundamental attribution is defined as making a judgment about someone's character which can be from a person’s conduct in a particular situation. Not seeing the German individuals were experiencing

An Opinion on the Pros and Cons of Playing Online Games

Online Games

Today, a variety of activities are pursued by many individuals in search of happiness, such as shopping, sports, food trips, and online gaming. Online games have become increasingly popular among numerous people. Games like "League of Legends" (LOL) on computers or "Multiplayer online battle arena" (MOBA) on mobile phones are widely enjoyed. Engaging in these

A Personal Opinion on the Requirements of Getting College Why I Deserve This Scholarship in the United States of America

Why I Deserve This Scholarship

I did not know how hard it was to find a good scholarship until I tried to find one myself. Scholarships are not meant for just anyone they are meant for those who do the best in school and leave out the ones who just do OK in school. That brings me to why I

opinion essay war

Hi, my name is Amy 👋

In case you can't find a relevant example, our professional writers are ready to help you write a unique paper. Just talk to our smart assistant Amy and she'll connect you with the best match.

Something’s Fishy About the ‘Migrant Crisis’

The federal government’s dysfunction leaves immigrant-friendly cities feeling overwhelmed.

Migrants stand at a processing center as they wait for a bus to Chicago, in downtown Brownsville, Texas, U.S., October 24, 2023.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and NOA, News Over Audio, using AI narration.

When the mayor of New York, of all places, warned that a recent influx of asylum seekers would destroy his city , something didn’t add up.

“I said it last year when we had 15,000, and I’m telling you now at 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose,” Eric Adams urged in September. By the end of the year, more than 150,000 migrants had arrived . Still, the mayor’s apocalyptic prediction didn’t square with New York’s past experience. How could a city with more than 8 million residents, more than 3 million of whom are foreign-born, find itself overwhelmed by a much smaller number of newcomers?

In another legendary haven for immigrants, similar dynamics were playing out. Chicago has more than 500,000 foreign-born residents, about 20 percent of its population, but it has been straining to handle the arrival of just 35,000 asylum seekers in the past year and a half. Some people have even ended up on the floors of police stations or in public parks. Mayor Brandon Johnson joined Adams and a handful of other big-city mayors in signing a letter seeking help with the “large numbers of additional asylum seekers being brought to our cities.”

Sometimes the best way to understand why something is going wrong is to look at what’s going right. The asylum seekers from the border aren’t the only outsiders in town. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought a separate influx of displaced people into U.S. cities that quietly assimilated most of them. “We have at least 30,000 Ukrainian refugees in the city of Chicago, and no one has even noticed,” Johnson told me in a recent interview.

According to New York officials , of about 30,000 Ukrainians who resettled there, very few ended up in shelters. By contrast, the city has scrambled to open nearly 200 emergency shelters to house asylees from the southwest border.

What ensured the quiet assimilation of displaced Ukrainians? Why has the arrival of asylum seekers from Latin America been so different? And why have some cities managed to weather the so-called crisis without any outcry or political backlash? In interviews with mayors, other municipal officials, nonprofit leaders, and immigration lawyers in several states, I pieced together an answer stemming from two major differences in federal policy. First, the Biden administration admitted the Ukrainians under terms that allowed them to work right away. Second, the feds had a plan for where to place these newcomers. It included coordination with local governments, individual sponsors, and civil-society groups. The Biden administration did not leave Ukrainian newcomers vulnerable to the whims of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who since April 2022 has transported 37,800 migrants to New York City, 31,400 to Chicago, and thousands more to other blue cities—in a successful bid to push the immigration debate rightward and advance the idea that immigrants are a burden on native-born people.

To call this moment a “migrant crisis” is to let elected federal officials off the hook. But a “crisis of politicians kicking the problem down the road until opportunists set it on fire” is hard to fit into a tweet, so we’ll have to make do.

Asylum is a special form of protection for migrants who are at risk of serious harm in their home country because of their religion, political affiliation, nationality, race, or membership in a particular social group. Many people approaching the Southwest border are trying to avail themselves of that protection. In an ideal world, asylum seekers would cross the U.S. border at a designated port of entry , present themselves to immigration officers, and register as applicants for asylum. Those who pass an initial interview—by convincing an asylum officer that they have a credible fear of persecution or torture if they are turned away—should then receive a court date, find a lawyer, and have a chance to prove to a judge that they qualify to enter the United States. If rejected, they can be removed.

Every step of this process is broken.

First, the U.S. government discourages asylum seekers from crossing at ports of entry. It turns away many would-be asylum seekers who arrive at those entry points and, as the Cato Institute immigration expert David J. Bier explains , works with the Mexican government to discourage would-be asylum seekers from ever reaching them. This all but ensures that large numbers will try to cross in more dangerous places—through deserts, along the Rio Grande. Asylum seekers do then try to present themselves to an official agent, regularly lining up and waiting their turn to do so.

Second, Congress has underfunded immigration courts to such an extent that evaluating asylum claims quickly is impossible. According to the nonpartisan data clearinghouse TRAC at Syracuse University, the average wait time for an asylum hearing has reached nearly 4.5 years . Given that, detaining all applicants as they await trial is financially prohibitive. So they are typically released into the U.S. According to an analysis of government data from 2008 to 2018 by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, 83 percent of non-detained immigrants, and 96 percent of those with a lawyer, attend their hearings.

Large majorities of Americans favor legal immigration. News coverage and political commentary might leave the impression that asylum seekers must be ignoring some clear, orderly process. But the reality is that successive administrations—both Democratic and Republican—and lawmakers of both parties have made legal, orderly immigration at the southwestern border impossible. In doing so, they created a form of chaos that is now spreading throughout the nation.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act , which, among other things, created a six-month waiting period before asylum seekers could legally receive a work permit. In essence, asylum seekers from the southwestern border are prohibited from taking care of themselves. Many try anyway. “I talked to two guys just half an hour ago,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told me recently. They “were commuting to Colorado Springs, which is about an hour and 20 minutes from here, just for jobs to shovel snow on a daily basis. People are hungry for work.”

Yet if asylum seekers are caught working under the table, their application can be rejected. And if they turn begrudgingly to government aid, they incur resentment from many native-born Americans who question why newcomers are receiving handouts.

The waiting period is meant as a deterrent. If people in troubled nations get the idea that applying for asylum is a sure way to get a work permit in the United States, the logic goes, the number of migrants will balloon. The problem is that persecution and economic devastation in migrants’ home country and greater opportunities in the U.S. are much stronger determinants of migration than tweaks to U.S. immigration policy. As I have previously argued, deterrence policies do not meaningfully dissuade migrants from making the journey, and even harsh Trump-era policies such as family separation had no discernible effect. Clinton now criticizes the six-month work-permit waiting period. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said in a recent radio interview —curiously failing to mention that he had signed that nonsensical requirement into law.

These policies allow politicians to posture as being tough on immigration, but they create a vicious cycle: When policies hamper asylum seekers from entering the country in an orderly way, they create disorder that stokes anti-immigrant sentiment—thereby pressuring future administrations to crack down on immigrants even further, creating more disorder and fueling more backlash.

The lack of work permits is a national problem, but not every city is facing a migrant crisis. Immigration-court filings from last spring indicate that, along with New York City and the Chicago area, the counties that include Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami are all top destinations for asylum seekers, but the latter three cities show few signs of distress.

What is the “migrant crisis” in New York and Chicago? It includes visible signs of disorder like migrants sleeping outside as hotel rooms fill up , anger among native-born Americans that limited resources are being spent on migrants , and an expensive bureaucratic scramble to arrange health screenings, translation services, housing programs, legal services, school placements, school buses, and other needs for newcomers.

Those distress signals are absent in Houston. Late last year, the city’s outgoing mayor, Sylvester Turner, told NBC that the migrant crisis required federal intervention. Yet when asked whether the situation had caused budget cutbacks in his city, Turner replied, “In Houston this problem has not been that acute.” When I contacted the office of the current mayor, John Whitmire, about the issue, a spokesperson directed me to Catholic Charities and said, “The city does not handle this process.” Unlike New York and Chicago, Houston has not felt sufficiently pressured to create new bureaucracies to respond to the migrant crisis. Betsy Ballard, a spokesperson for the Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston, told me, “We have not had a big increase in people on the street … It’s not like there are big encampments.” A spokesperson for the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston, the lead agency in the city’s nationally recognized services program for unhoused people, likewise said that the organization hadn’t seen an appreciable influx of asylum seekers.

Reporting by The New York Times indicates that homeless shelters in Los Angeles have similarly not detected “a significant increase in recent migrants seeking temporary housing.” The California city, the Times declared, “has quietly avoided the kind of emergency that has strained shelters and left officials [elsewhere] pleading for federal help.”

Miami and surrounding Miami-Dade County are used to accommodating migrants from Latin America. Homelessness in the area has actually decreased of late, Ron Book, the director of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, told me. City and county public resources have not been diverted, according to city and county officials. Despite some signs of strain—the county school system has absorbed tens of thousands of new kids—the superintendent has rejected the “ crisis ” label. In fact, students have helped fill schools that had long been under capacity . The officials I interviewed were quick to note the need for federal intervention, including faster work-permit authorization and more federal dollars, but none painted a picture of looming destruction in South Florida as a result of the newcomers. Last summer, the executive director of Catholic Legal Services of the Archdiocese of Miami declared that, whereas other cities were “decrying the lack of resources and lack of bed space,” Miami had “just somehow made it work.” He noted that local nonprofits and immigrant-friendly populations had been able to absorb newcomers.

New York and Chicago don’t lack such resources. Nonprofits have been active in providing food, legal services, and many other forms of help. The problem isn’t a lack of community support or even the number of migrants, exactly. It’s the method—or lack of method—of the migrants’ arrival. The busing itself is a disruption.

Both New York and Chicago—unlike Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles—have been heavily targeted by Abbott’s migrant-relocation program. As of early February, Texas had steered tens of thousands of migrants to both cities. Nearly 70 percent of asylum seekers arriving in Chicago came via the busing program. By contrast, the state transported only 1,500 asylees to Los Angeles and none to Miami or Houston. In the NBC interview, Turner directly attributed the relative calm in Houston to the lack of busing.

When immigrants make their way to a city in an organic fashion, they usually are drawn to a place where they have family ties, job leads, or other connections and resources available. When they’re resettled through an official government program, as the displaced Ukrainians were, the federal government coordinates with local governments to ensure a smooth transition.

That’s very different from the haphazard Texas busing program. When Abbott’s buses arrive at their destinations, many of them are filled with people who had specific plans to go somewhere else. Cities then re-ticket many of the passengers. The mayor of Denver told me that roughly 40 percent of asylees who are bused into his city have no intention of staying there.

Washington’s failure to oversee where migrants go after entering the U.S. is causing particular pain to New York—and not just because the city has received the largest number of migrants from Texas buses. A symbol of American openness, wealth, and opportunity, and a magnet for people who don’t have a destination in mind, the city also has a stringent legal obligation, under a decades-old ruling by the state’s supreme court, to provide shelter to anyone who asks for it. A policy born out of the plight of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers is now also applicable to asylum seekers who are flocking to the city for aid—a fact that many asylum seekers learn along their journey to the United States. The Times reported in October on a Mauritanian asylum seeker who flew to Turkey and then Nicaragua with no thought on where in the U.S. he would live until a fellow migrant gave him the address to New York City’s main intake center for homeless men.

The American Immigration Council has recommended establishing a federal Center for Migrant Coordination, a centralized body that would help guide where asylum applicants go. Instead of standing by as New York or Chicago are inundated with buses and given little to no warning—and as desperate applicants seek out random addresses—the federal government could connect migrants with communities, organizations, and host families that can help them settle as they wait for their cases to be adjudicated. “Local government is not designed to carry this type of load,” Johnson told me.

More federal involvement would also limit Abbott’s arbitrary power. “The governor of New York didn’t get to decide where to send every Ukrainian refugee because they landed at JFK when they came to the U.S.,” Mike Johnston, the Denver mayor, told me. “There was a coordinated plan. If we had work authorization, we could easily get 200 other mayors together to say, ‘Okay great, Colorado Springs, how many folks can you take? Grand Junction, how many folks can you take?’”

For political reasons, the Biden administration has abdicated its responsibility to coordinate where asylees from the southwestern border end up. Reuters has reported that in 2021 and 2022 Biden officials “rejected a proposal to transport some migrants to other U.S. cities because the White House did not want ‘full ownership’ of the issue.” Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden is still being blamed for the crisis.

The American public is not particularly xenophobic. One 2020 study that looked at eight decades of opinion polling found that “despite frequent references to a hostile climate for immigrants, especially refugees, and a current administration that lends validity to that claim, the US public has been more welcoming of refugees in the twenty-first century than at any time during the twentieth century.”

The core cause of political backlash to immigration is a chaotic process that gives voters the impression that no one is in charge. Americans do not have some instinctive sense of the number of border crossers, but they do notice asylum seekers sleeping on the streets and their mayors announcing funding diversions from popular programs to migrant care. Views of immigration are highly contingent on the migrants’ country of origin and method of entry, the receiving country’s economic circumstances, and of course, the host population’s perception of whether its government controls its own borders.

In 2016, in the midst of a mass exodus of refugees from the Middle East, the U.K. voted to leave the European Union; Brexit supporters stoked fears that remaining in the bloc would allow migrants to flow unchecked across the Channel. But following the vote, Britain saw record high levels of immigration . Remarkably, the salience of the issue dropped dramatically and public opinion warmed to immigrants. Sentiment hardened again more recently, amid an uptick in the number of migrants seeking asylum by crossing the English Channel in small boats. In language that’s remarkably familiar, more than half of the respondents to one poll agreed that the vessels constituted an “invasion.”

American anxiety over border control follows similar patterns. And these anxieties won’t be pacified by vague and unrealistic promises to “shut down the border” ; they need to be addressed with policies that reduce the real and perceived burdens of asylum seekers.

America has had ample practice absorbing large numbers of immigrants. In 1907, 1.25 million immigrants were processed at Ellis Island. That’s an average of 3,400 people a day. The busiest day ever was April 7 , when the immigration center accepted 11,747 people. More than 625,000 of that year’s immigrants settled in just four states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois . More than 100 years later, some of America’s most immigrant-friendly cities are cracking under a much smaller influx of asylum seekers. That’s not the inevitable result of our current circumstances, nor is it proof of our incapacity to grant refuge to endangered people. It’s a function of our elected leaders’ refusal to build a legal-immigration system capable of handling the current volume of asylum applicants in an efficient, humane way. If New York City is overwhelmed, that will not be because of migrants, but because of native-born political dysfunction.

English Summary

Essay on War and Peace

No doubt war is an evil, the greatest catastrophe that befalls human beings. It brings death and destruction, disease and starvation, poverty, and ruin in its wake.

One has only to look back to the havoc that was wrought in various countries not many years ago, in order to estimate the destructive effects of war. A particularly disturbing side of modern wars is that they tend to become global so that they may engulf the entire world.

But there are people who consider war as something grand and heroic and regard it as something that brings out the best in men, but this does not alter the fact that war is a terrible, dreadful calamity.

This is especially so now that a war will now be fought with atom bombs. Some people say war is necessary. A glance at the past history will tell that war has been a recurrent phenomenon in the history of nation.

No period in world history has been the devastating effects of war. We have had wars of all types long and short. In view of this it seems futile to talk of permanent and everlasting peace or to make plans for the establishment of eternal peace.

We have had advocates of non violence and the theory of the brotherhood of man. We have had the Buddha, Christ and Mahatma Gandhi. But in spite of that, weapons have always been used, military force has always been employed, clashes of arms have always occurred; war has always been waged.

War has indeed been such a marked feature of every age and period that it has come to be regarded As part of the normal life of nations. Machiavelli, the author of the known book, The Prince, defined peace as an interval between two wars Molise, the famous German field marshal declared war to be part of God’s world order.

Poets and prophets have dreamt of a millennium, a utopia in which war will not exist and eternal peace will reign on earth. But these dreams have not been fulfilled. After the Great War of 1914-18, it was thought that there would be no war for a long time to come and an institution called the League of Nations was founded as a safeguard against the outbreak of war.

The occurrence of another war (1939-45), however, conclusively proved that to think of an unbroken peace is to be unrealistic And that no institution or assembly can ever ensure the permanence of peace.

The League of Nations collapsed completely under the tensions and stresses created by Hitler. The United Nations Organization with all the good work that It has been doing is not proving as effective as was desired.

Large numbers of Wars, the most recent ones being the one in Vietnam, the other between India and Pakistan, or indo-china War, Iran-Iraq war or Arab Israel war, have been fought despite the UN. The fact of the matter is that fighting in a natural instinct in man.

When individuals cannot live always in peace, it is, indeed, too much to expect so many nations to live in a state of Eternal peace. Besides, there will always be wide differences of opinion between various nation, different angles of looking at matters that have international importance, radical difference in policy and ideology and these cannot be settled by mere discussions.

So resort to war becomes necessary in such circumstances. Before the outbreak of World War II, for instance, the spread of Communism in Russia created distrust and suspicion in Europe, democracy was an eyesore to Nazi Germany, British Conservatives were apprehensive of the possibility of Britain going Communist.

In short, the political ideology of one country being abhorrent to other times were certainly not conducive to the continuance of peace. Add to all this the traditional enemities between nations and international disharmony that have their roots in past history.

For example, Germany wished to avenge the humiliating terms imposed upon her at the conclusion of the war of 1914-18 and desired to smash the British Empire and establish an empire of her own. Past wounds, in fact, were not healed up and goaded it to take revenge.

A feverish arms race was going on between the hostile nations in anticipation of such an eventuality, and disarmament efforts were proving futile. The Indo-Pakistan war was fought over the Kashmir issue.

The war in Vietnam Was due to ideological differences. It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.

He wants something thrilling and full of excitement and he fights in order to get an outlet for his accumulated energy. It must be admitted, too, that war Has its good side. It spurs men to heroism and self-sacrifice. It is an incentive to scientific research and development. War is obviously an escape from the lethargy of peace.

Related Posts:

  • Stri Purush Tulana by Tarabai Shinde Analysis
  • Random Occupation Generator
  • Random Phrase Generator [English]
  • Random Ability Generator Pokemon
  • Lady Of Shalott Poem By Alfred Lord Tennyson Summary, Notes And Line By Line Analysis In English
  • Random Disease Generator [Fake & Real]
  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy.

A man carefully watching where he steps along a debris-strewn street at night.

By Nir Avishai Cohen

Mr. Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces, is the author of the book “Love Israel, Support Palestine.”

I was in Austin, Texas, for work on Saturday when I received a call from my commander in the Israel Defense Forces to return to Israel and head to the front line. I didn’t hesitate. I knew that the citizens of my country were in real danger. My duty first and foremost is to join the fight against those who unleashed a massacre on my people. I boarded the first flight I found out of Austin to head home to join the I.D.F. reserves, where I serve as a brigade operations command officer.

During my long flight to Israel, my mind couldn’t rest. I was trying to write down my feelings and thoughts about everything happening — and everything that’s about to happen — in my beloved country.

Little by little, the dimensions of the horrors of the most brutal attack that Israelis have experienced since the establishment of the state were being revealed. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including women, children and older people. About 150 citizens and soldiers have been taken captive. There’s nothing in the world that can justify the murder of hundreds of innocent people.

But I’d like to say one thing clearly, before I go to battle: There’s no such thing as “unavoidable.” This war could have been avoided, and no one did enough to prevent it. Israel did not do enough to make peace; we just conquered the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, expanded the illegal settlements and imposed a long-term siege on the Gaza Strip.

For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote: “Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little time.

I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.

Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless. The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians.

As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people and to focus on destroying the militant army of Hamas.

This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am not sure I will come back from it alive, but I do know that a minute after the war is over, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with the leaders who led them to this moment. We must wake up and not let the extremists rule. Palestinians and Israelis must denounce the extremists who are driven by religious fanaticism. The Israelis will have to oust National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and their far-right circle from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the leadership of Hamas.

I try to look for shreds of hope. The Yom Kippur War, the most difficult war that Israel had known until this week, started by surprise in 1973. After a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt was finally signed in 1979, the border with Egypt — one that was once the site of the dead and wounded — became a border of peace.

Israelis must realize that there is no greater security asset than peace. The strongest army cannot protect the country the way peace does. This current war proves it once again. Israel has followed the path of war for too long.

At the end, after all of the dead Israelis and Palestinians are buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, the people who share a home in this land will have to understand that there is no other choice but to follow the path of peace. That is where true victory lies.

Nir Avishai Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces, is the author of the book “Love Israel, Support Palestine.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

COMMENTS

  1. Opinion

    Opinion | Russia's War in Ukraine Is a Moral, Not Just Military, Crisis - The New York Times Guest Essay Ukraine Presents a Moral Crisis, Not Just a Military One Feb. 28, 2022 Olena Zhuk with...

  2. Opinion: I grew up in Russia and Ukraine. Here's what I say ...

    Back then I wrote an essay about the Donbas war called "Don't Worry, Grandma, This War Will Last Forever." But I didn't realize how prophetic my title would be.

  3. Ukraine's army chief: The design of war has changed

    Opinion by Valerii Zaluzhnyi 5 minute read Updated 12:00 PM EST, Thu February 8, 2024 Link Copied! Former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, laid out his strategy...

  4. Opinion: Who is winning? Gen. Petraeus on Ukraine war, two years in

    Two years into the Ukraine war, the tide has shifted, and Russian forces have some momentum, according to retired US General David Petraeus.

  5. Opinion

    Mr. Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, an American foreign policy think tank. As the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine approaches, it has ...

  6. Opinion

    For us Ukrainians, the world would never be the same. Yet it was another act of recognition in 2022, one largely neglected, that made my heart beat faster. On Oct. 18, Ukraine's Parliament declared...

  7. Opinion

    Opinion 7 opinions on the war in Ukraine after one year By Washington Post Staff February 24, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST Members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine form up for a ceremony Thursday to...

  8. Guest Essay: The war in Ukraine and the danger of World War III

    The United States and NATO are funneling billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine. On March 26, U.S. President Joe Biden publicly called for a "regime change" in Moscow — though he clarified that it was a personal opinion, not policy. The United States is fighting a de facto proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

  9. The conflict between a just war and peace

    Letters. Andy Beckett ( Pacifists are being elbowed out of British politics just when we need them most, 3 March) appears to think that we have the choice either to be pacifists or to have to ...

  10. War in Ukraine: Public opinion in the first year of the conflict

    International public opinion of President Vladimir Putin and Russia turned much more negative following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Attitudes about Putin and Russia were already negative in many countries before the war in Ukraine. But in spring 2022, shortly after the invasion, a median of 90% of adults across 18 surveyed countries said ...

  11. Op-Comic: The Ukraine war enters its third year

    Nora Krug is the author of the graphic memoir, "Belonging," and the illustrator of the visual edition of Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny."

  12. Analysis: Two years of war has been a disaster for Russia with no end

    Two years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I was among the many long-time observers of the Kremlin who got it wrong. Few could fathom why Vladimir Putin, Russia's ...

  13. Putin's War in Ukraine Is Decimating the Russian Economy

    Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world

  14. Opinion

    Just as important, China is not equivalent to Russia. The latter is a menace but one that — as Vance argues — should theoretically be containable and deterrable, even without American ...

  15. How to Write War Essay: Step-By-Step Guide

    March 9, 2023 5 minutes Share the article Understanding the Purpose and Scope of a War Essay A condition of armed conflict between nations or between groups living in one nation is known as war. Sounds not like much fun, does it?

  16. Essay On War: Writing Tips and Topic Ideas

    July 16, 2022 12 min read Writing an impressive piece of paper is always a challenging task, but it becomes even harder if you have to address a delicate and controversial topic, such as war.

  17. Essays About War: Top 5 Examples And 5 Prompts

    1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson "Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war.

  18. #Essays on War: Why Do We Fight?

    #Essays on War: Why Do We Fight? Alexander Amoroso January 12, 2017 I have recently started to think about the reason for my service. "Why did I voluntarily sign up to potentially die in war?" This question was posed to me and my Army ROTC battery.

  19. US Unveils Biggest Sanctions Package on Russia Since War Began

    The US imposed its biggest one-day sanctions package against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, targeting more than 500 people and entities in a fresh bid to squeeze the country ...

  20. Hard Lessons Make for Hard Choices 2 Years Into the War in Ukraine

    In a recent opinion poll conducted in January for the European Council on Foreign Relations in 12 countries, only 10 percent of Europeans said they believed Ukraine would win the war, though what ...

  21. The Causes Of World War II (opinion essay)

    On December 7, 1941, The Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Within hours the U.S. Congress declared war against Japan, plunging the U.S. headfirst into World War II. What Were the Causes of World War 2? Many historians today believe that some of the causes of World War II can be traced to World War I (1914-1918).

  22. ⇉My View and Opinion on War Essay Example

    128 writers ready to help you now Get original paper Without paying upfront Wars tend to treat soldiers, men, women, and even innocent children less of a person than they truly are. During a war, the television, radio, and the Internet are filled with news reports of war casualties, captives, and tortured soldiers.

  23. Asylum Seekers Didn't Create the 'Migrant Crisis'

    When the mayor of New York, of all places, warned that a recent influx of asylum seekers would destroy his city, something didn't add up. "I said it last year when we had 15,000, and I'm ...

  24. Opinion

    Opinion | A Brutal New Phase of Putin's Terrible War in Ukraine - The New York Times The Editorial Board A Brutal New Phase of Putin's Terrible War in Ukraine Jan. 21, 2023 Illustration by...

  25. Essay on War and Peace

    No doubt war is an evil, the greatest catastrophe that befalls human beings. It brings death and destruction, disease and starvation, poverty, and ruin in its wake. One has only to look back to the havoc that was wrought in various countries not many years ago, in order to estimate the destructive effects of war.

  26. Opinion

    Opinion | I'm Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy. - The New York Times Guest Essay I'm Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy. Oct. 13, 2023 A man finds...

  27. How to Write an Opinion Essay in 6 Steps

    5 Revise. Now is the time to revise, or clean it up. Make sure your essay flows logically; jumping from one topic to the next will disorient the reader. Check that all of your evidence supports your opinion. Listen to the way your essay sounds (literally, read it out loud to yourself).