This letter concerns the political opinion article, “The U.S. Must Continue Supporting Ukraine”, published in Volume 56, Edition 12 of the Viking Saga and authored by Web Editor-in-Chief Alex Salerno (‘24). I must preface this letter by stating that I appreciate Salerno’s commitment to consistently writing about political topics in the Saga; such discourse is incredibly important to consider, especially in a school that prides itself on “[encouraging] exemplary citizenship in our students”. Salerno’s articles have inspired much debate between students: before school, during advisory, while at lunchtime, and even in the classroom. As a natural extension of this healthy debate, this letter aims not to critique a particular political opinion of Salerno’s, but rather the process of presenting an argument for the school community. In particular, I have taken great care in maintaining a politically neutral point of view throughout this letter. While there are others, I discuss two issues in this letter: credibility and oversimplification.
One of my main issues with this article is its lack of verifiability, ultimately undermining its credibility. In our English classes, we learn that providing sources to support our argument not only allows us to avoid plagiarism, but also allows the reader to trust that our argument is well-reasoned, and gives our argument a foundation to stand upon. One 2017 study even found a psychological “citation effect”, where in-text citations “make statements slightly more believable”. In his article, Salerno makes multiple claims that are not supported by citations, and as such mislead and undermine his argument.
Salerno leads with the claim that “[the] United States of America is THE premier super power (sic) in the world”, and supports this claim by explaining the United States’ military and economic dominance. Salerno supports this reasoning with two statistics: first, that the United States has “the biggest economy with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $27.974 trillion”, and second, that the United States has “the third most manpower with a population of roughly 331.9 million”.
I was unable to find a reliable source for the exact GDP statistic Salerno states. However, a similar statistic is estimated by the International Monetary Fund of $27.97 trillion, as of 9 March 2024. While Salerno’s main point that the United States economy is the largest in the world by GDP is unaffected by minute statistical details, the failure to provide a source the reader can look up undermines the argument’s credibility, especially with a statistic as dynamic as GDP. In particular, GDP can grow or shrink each fiscal quarter, as it did in the fourth quarter of 2023 (according to the U.S. Department of Commerce), and as such, a GDP statistic that is accurate at one point in time is not necessarily accurate the next. By failing to provide a source or date for this statistic, Salerno’s evidence for his claims can be perceived as unreliable from the very start of his article, eroding his argument’s persuasiveness.
The population statistic is similarly dynamic; however, Salerno at least clarifies this statistic as “roughly 331.9 million” this time. In this case, Salerno appears to have taken an estimate from the United States Census Bureau around May 2021; however, population growth since then led the Census Bureau to estimate the population to be around 335.9 million in January 2024.
While the aforementioned points may seem overly critical, even petty, the previous statistics cannot be considered “common knowledge”, defined by the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary as “something that many or most people know” and generally exempt from sourcing in academic writing. Additionally, the habit of not providing a source for statistics can lead to misleading, or downright factually incorrect, arguments. For instance, later in the article, Salerno claims that “we don’t have the industrial capacity that we had in the 1940s”, implying that our industrial capacity today is less than in the 1940s. This statement is vague at best, and factually incorrect at worst. According to a 2017 article by Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute, the United States “will produce about four times more factory output [in 2017] than in the 1940s with about the same number of factory workers” because of technological improvements that make workers more efficient. In other words, we have more industrial capacity now than in the 1940s, not less. Salerno could be alluding to the percent employment in manufacturing of American workers, which did decrease significantly from 1940 to 2016; however, this is tangential to Salerno’s argument in the article, which is that “we have the ability to build up and be able to win a war against both of our greatest foes”, which references industrial capacity, not industrial employment. This error significantly undermines Salerno’s argument because of the lack of verifiability of Salerno’s claims, as mentioned before. In particular, the evidence Salerno uses to support his claims is simply faulty, undermining his claim.
In addition to the lack of verifiability in the article, Salerno oversimplifies recent political history to the point of misrepresenting political arguments. For instance, he claims that “[the] Donald Trump supporting (sic) side of the G.O.P. has been against aiding Ukraine from the start”. However, this simply isn’t true, and ignores the complexities of Washington politics surrounding Ukraine. While certain Republican lawmakers, including Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), have spent the past seven months delaying additional aid to Ukraine, those lawmakers have not always taken such a stance. For instance, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who many consider to be a staunch ally of Trump’s, even advocated to send American tanks to Ukraine in early 2023, and surprised legislators when he refused to back a bill that would fund both the border and aid to Ukraine recently. In other words, Graham did not always believe that “the U.S. shouldn’t fund a war that won’t affect the U.S. itself”; this wing of the Republican party transformed into this position. By reducing this complexity, Salerno oversimplifies the debates on Capitol Hill, which directly leads to flawed generalizations and labels later in the article. The “Trump supporting (sic) side of the G.O.P.” does not oppose funding the war in Ukraine, as implied in Salerno’s article, but they consider domestic issues more important. Senator Graham, for instance, emphasized the importance of both in an interview in December 2023. These important distinctions reflect the complex state of Washington’s politics, and are important to note in understanding the situation as a whole.
What is more egregious to me is the misrepresentation of such an approach as a “pacifist” approach, which Salerno characterizes as one that “usually comes from the democratic (sic) side of the aisle” and “uncommon for republicans (sic)”. In this argument, Salerno ignores how, historically, American support for foreign nations has been viewed. Throughout recent American history, including the Cold War, many presidents of both the Democratic and Republican parties have, under the policy of deterrence theory (which, according to Stephen L. Quackenbush, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri, is “the use of a threat (explicit or not) by one party in an attempt to convince another party to maintain the status quo”), made both implicit and explicit threats to engage in war to protect our interests. For instance, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Democratic president Jimmy Carter issued the Carter Doctrine during 1980 State of the Union speech, making it clear that any “assault on the vital interests of the United States of America”, including the Soviet threat to gain influence over the Middle East, would be “repelled by any means necessary, including military force”. While it had a complex history over four decades that is beyond the scope of this letter, some scholars, including Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, argue that the Carter Doctrine is still relevant in American foreign policy decisions in the Biden administration. As such, Salerno’s characterization of such complex discussions oversimplifies the “mindset” politicians assume when debating foreign policy, which is dangerous for a healthy political debate.
While this letter points out many imperfections in Salerno’s article, they are merely details in its overall purpose and effect; I simply wish for the feedback in this article to be considered and potentially applied. From personal experience, Salerno’s articles have inspired a marked increase in raising political awareness in our school community. The beauty of any argument comes from its opposition, and Salerno’s initiative in this and previous articles is to be admired.
Citations(note: the numbers in the layout didn’t translate to our website. So, this is just a list of sources used by Yang)
1 “About Us”: https://www.eastlymeschools.org/high-school/general-info/about-us-clone. East Lyme High School. East Lyme Schools. Retrieved 9 March 2024
2 “Why Cite?”: https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/undergraduates/using-sources/principles-citing-sources/why-cite. Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. Yale University. Retrieved 9 March 2024. “When you establish this context for your ideas, you create a space in which your reader can think in a new way about an established problem or question
3 Putnam, Adam L.; Phelps, Riley J. (1 September 2017). “The citation effect: In-text citations moderately increase belief in trivia claims”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001691816302104. Acta Psychologica. 179: 114–123. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.07.010. Retrieved 9 March 2024
4 “GDP, current prices”: https://web.archive.org/web/20240309053345/https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/USA?zoom=USA&highlight=USA. International Monetary Fund. Archived from the original:https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/USA?zoom=USA&highlight=USA on 9 March 2024. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
5 “By the Numbers: U.S. Economy Grows Faster than Expected for Year and Final Quarter of 2023”: https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024/01/numbers-us-economy-grows-faster-expected-year-and-final-quarter-2023. U.S. Department of Commerce. 26 January 2024. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
6 “Monthly Population Estimates for the United States: April 1, 2020 to December 1, 2024 (NA-EST2023-POP)”: available for download at https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-2023/national/totals/. U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. December 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2024
7 “Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day”: https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024/01/census-bureau-projects-us-and-world-populations-new-years-day. U.S. Department of Commerce. 3 January 2024. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
8 “common knowledge”: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20knowledge. Merriam -Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 9 March 2024
9 “The Exception: Common Knowledge”: https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/exception-common-knowledge. Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
10 Perry, Mark (24 July 2017). “The US Produces 40% More Factory Output Today Vs. 20 Years Ago with 5M Fewer Workers. Technology Job Theft?”: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-us-produces-40-more-factory-output-today-vs-20-years-ago-with-5m-fewer workers-technology-job-theft/. American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved 9 March 2024
11 “The Way We Were: The Changing Geography of US Manufacturing From 1940 to 2016”: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/manufacturingstates/. CEW Georgetown. Georgetown University. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
12 Knutson, Jacob (7 March 2024). “Yellen says House GOP delay on Ukraine aid is “a gift to Putin””: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/yellen-ukraine-military-aid-house-gop-putin-gift. Axios. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
13 Gans, Jared (17 January 2023). “Lindsey Graham to join Trump for South Carolina campaign team launch”: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3816672-lindsey-graham-to-join-trump-for-south-carolina-campaign-team-launch/. The Hill. Nexstar Media. Retrieved 9 March 2024. “Graham has been one of Trump’s closest allies since the start of his presidency, only briefly criticizing him for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection before backing him again.”
14 Vlamis, Kelsey (21 January 2023). “Sen. Lindsey Graham said he’s ‘tired of the s*** show’ and that the US and Germany should send tanks to Ukraine: ‘World order is at stake'”: https://www.businessinsider.com/lindsey-graham-us-germany-send-ukraine-tanks-world-order-2023-1. Business Insider. Insider. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
15 Bolton, Alexander (19 February 2024). “Graham’s U-turns have Senate colleagues fed up: ‘Annoying,’ ‘tiresome'”: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4476241-grahams-u-turns-have-senate-colleagues-fed-up-annoying-tiresome/. The Hill. Nexstar Media. Retrieved 9 March 2024
16 “Transcript: Sen. Lindsey Graham on “Face the Nation,” Dec. 31, 2023 – CBS News”: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lindsey-graham-face-the-nation-transcript-12-31-2022/. CBS News. CBS Interactive. 31 December 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
17 Quackenbush, Stephen L. (April 2011). “Deterrence theory: where do we stand?”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23024618. Review of International Studies. 37 (2): 741–762. doi:10.1017/S0260210510000896. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
18 “45. Editorial Note”, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVIII, Middle East Region; Arabian Peninsula: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v18/d45. Of ice of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. United States Department of State. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
19 “Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Ph.D.”: https://usnwc.edu/Faculty-and-Departments/Directory/Nikolas-K-Gvosdev. U.S. Naval War College. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
20 Gvosdev, Nikolas K. (2 January 2021). “Trump Was Right to Question the Carter Doctrine, Biden Should Too”: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-was-right-question-carter-doctrine-biden-should-too-175572. The National Interest. Center for the National Interest. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
