Americans are not an unpatriotic people. So why do our leaders keep making the choice to let our service members bear the brunt? Part of the change may be the severity of the threat. Since World War II, the United States has not faced an existential war that would rally the public to plant Victory Gardens – which were unnecessary for food but critical to making the population feel useful – let alone one that would lead voters to want taxes raised to pay for the fight. Though Korea and Vietnam were not existential conflicts, they still embodied the very real conflict with the Soviet Union – which did pose such a threat. Forcing service through the draft during Vietnam was needed for workforce issues, but it also caused the hardship to be shared beyond those who might normally have joined the military. There hasn’t been a draft since 1973.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not these sort of existential conflicts, either. They were limited both in their goals and in the means the United States would use to win them, and they were deliberately kept under the radar by leaders through such things as continuing resolutions or supplemental appropriations that obscured their true impact on the federal budget. This created even further distance between the choice to go to war and its ensuing burden: A population’s support for a war does not mean much if the true costs are being hidden.

But two weeks into Putin’s war in Ukraine, the price that American citizens will bear while the world confronts him is already on full display at gas pumps, a daily reminder that values often require sacrifice. Americans so far are rising to the challenge: Early in the war, polls found people were less likely to support sanctions on Russia if it meant higher energy prices here. By the second week of the conflict, support for sanctions had gone up – and 69 percent of Americans backed the economic measures even if it meant higher gas prices.