#9 Mother Russia The US is running out of cruise missiles. That is all.
Wrong. Completely backward.
"The American strategy is presenting Western countries with a stark choice between pouring more supplies into Ukraine or husbanding finite capabilities they may need for their own defense.
Germany has declined to transfer tanks to Ukraine on grounds that it simply cannot spare them. Canada quickly ran short on rocket launchers and other equipment that the Ukrainians desperately need.
***The U.S. has already provided one-third of its overall stockpile of Javelin anti-tank missiles. ***
The US cannot easily deliver more without leaving its own armories badly depleted — and it may take months or years to significantly ramp up production.
Before the U.S. entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt and his military advisers engaged in intense debates about whether the U.S. should rush weapons to a beleaguered Britain or hang onto them in case America had to defend itself. Biden’s arsenal-of-democracy strategy is reaching a similar inflection point in Ukraine.
Kyiv will require far more Western support to beat back Russian forces gathering in the east, where relatively open terrain is less favorable to the defense. It will also need more sophisticated weapons, such as tanks and aircraft, to deny Russia a decisive advantage — and perhaps take the offensive if Moscow’s eastern offensive falters. Stout Ukrainian resistance has given Kyiv a reasonable chance of winning this war, but the cost of any victory, in equipment no less than lives, will be astounding.
For the same reason, the war in Ukraine is a sobering preview of the problems the U.S. itself would face in a conflict against Russia or China. If forced to go to war in Eastern Europe or the Western Pacific, Washington would spend down its stockpiles of missiles, precision-guided munitions and other critical capabilities in days or weeks. It would probably suffer severe losses of tanks, planes, ships and other assets that are sophisticated, costly and hard to replace. |