Friday’s announcement that the United States would send $345 million in military equipment to Taiwan from existing US stockpiles under President Biden’s “presidential drawdown authority” was pretty much ignored by the media. It shouldn’t have been.

It should have gained more attention because — as I have written before — President Biden is draining our military stockpiles and not replacing them fast enough to meet our own defense needs. (READ MORE: Ukraine Is Not Iraq)

We shouldn’t fail to supply Taiwan with the arms it needs to oppose the coming Chinese attack on it, but we have to look at what we have — and how quickly we can replenish it with the most capable weapon systems — before we can attend to other nations’ needs. Which brings us to Biden’s two ongoing wars — in Syria and Ukraine — neither of which he started but in both of which he’s clearly ignoring America’s national security interests. (READ MORE: US Needs to Show Its Willingness to Defend Taiwan)

As I have often written, the US should not make war except when our vital national security interests are at stake. In December 2021, in a column explaining why isolationists aren’t conservatives I wrote:

Our vital national security interests are those that we must defend to protect our freedoms preserved by the Constitution. That means we must have the freedoms of the seas, the skies, space, and the cyber realm. It also means that, like them or not, we are bound to defend our NATO allies and others, such as Japan and South Korea, if any of them are attacked. Ukraine is not a NATO member.

We have general national security interests in both Syria and Ukraine, but not vital ones because neither war threatens our freedoms.

Both Syria and Ukraine are now Biden’s wars.

In 2019, then-president Trump sent about fifteen hundred US troops to Syria to protect its oil fields. It was a boneheaded move because we have no vital national security interest in Syria. Trump later said that their mission was not to fight against the return of the Islamic State (ISIS) but only “for the oil,” which made his decision even more bizarre. (READ MORE: Trump Is Right on Syria)

When Trump sent US troops into Syria — adding to those that had been sent there by Obama — it had already been divided up between Russia and Iran, both of which were propping up dictator Bashar Assad. What US troops could or should do there — other than becoming targets of convenience — wasn’t at all clear.

There have been one hundred and six US military casualties and several  US contractors killed in “Operation Inherent Resolve,” the Syria operation.

Flash forward to 2023. Biden still has about one thousand troops (and more military contractors) there. Why? Apparently, in order to fight ISIS. If we are at war with ISIS in Syria and Iraq we should know what the objective is and how it can be accomplished.

In March 2023, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden was committed to keeping US troops in Syria and that, “We’re going to always act to defend our troops and our facilities.” If they weren’t in Syria, there would be no need to defend them.

This column has maintained that aid to Ukraine is in our national security interest generally because Ukraine was, and still is, killing Russian troops to lessen the threat to Western Europe. (READ MORE: Ukraine: How Much Is Enough?)

Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has stalled because Russia’s forces have had almost a year to prepare their defenses. At last reports, Ukraine has finally committed most of its forces to the counter-offensive. But still they remain stalled.

Aiding Ukraine was the single correct decision of Biden’s presidency but his doing so has dangerously depleted our military stockpiles which is being further drained by aid to Taiwan. Biden should be invoking the Defense Production Act to produce the munitions we’re running short of and asking Congress for the money to do so. He isn’t.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Within weeks it was clear that what Ukraine needed most was combat aircraft. Biden stopped the Poles from providing several dozen MiG-29s to Ukraine at that point. Those MiG-29s, which the Ukrainian air force had been flying for decades, would have been immediately — and significantly — useful. Now, more than eighteen months later, Ukraine may be getting some F-16s and their pilots are being trained to fight with them.

The Russian war against Ukraine has become Biden’s “endless war.” It will be his decisions — really, those of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken — that will decide Ukraine’s fate at least until 2025.

There is worse news on both sides of that war.

Ukraine is losing the war by not winning it and American politics has shifted against further aid.

Some, such as former vice president Mike Pence, favor sending Ukraine everything they need to win the war. He is only partially right, because Biden is denuding our own military stockpiles to do it. Pence is among the a few Republicans in favor of more aid to Ukraine. Many others, in Congress and among the public, are against it.

Former president Trump wants to be on both sides in the argument. He has said both that we should reduce the aid and that he would send even more aid to Ukraine than Biden has done. Worse still, he praised Putin for the Ukraine invasion, calling it “genius” and “savvy” in a February 2022 interview on the eve of the invasion. His thinking, to say the least, is dangerously inconsistent. His admiration of Putin is worse.

US military aid to Ukraine is critical to its ability to maintain the fight but its lack of many more troops to throw into the fight will obviously weaken its ability to win no matter how much aid the US sends.

Ukraine has committed essentially all its forces to the counter-offensive with little result so far. Russia can outlast Ukraine because it has a far larger population to draw troops from as well as a larger — if less capable — military arsenal to draw on.

Russian President Putin was weakened — but not substantially — by the coup attempt mounted against him by Wagner Group creator and commander Yevgeny Prigozhin. Putin has withdrawn from the grain deal enabling Ukraine to export its massive grain harvests which have been reduced by Russian attacks. The ships and grain export facilities have also been bombed by Russian aircraft and drones.

As I have written before, all Putin needs to do is keep the war going until after the 2024 presidential election when aid for Ukraine will probably be reduced.

For both Ukrainian President Zelensky and Putin it is an existential war. Neither could remain in office if they lose the war, and Putin could well lose his life if he fails to win. Thus, there is no prospect for peace in Ukraine, nor is there any prospect for breaking the stalemate.

Putin’s war on Ukraine will go on while he is alive because Alexandr Dugin — Putin’s political philosopher — prescribed it. Putin acts in accordance with Dugin’s writings so often that it cannot be a coincidence.

Putin believes Ukraine is the foundation stone in reviving Russia’s empire. Dugin wrote as much in his major work, Foundations of Geopolitics (1997). In it, Dugin wrote that, “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness … Its certain territorial ambitions represent an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics,” meaning the revival of Russia’s empire which is Putin’s principal goal.

Without Ukraine, as Dugin wrote and Putin believes, there is no prospect of Russia regaining its former power.

The talk of Ukraine joining NATO should be delayed until Putin is out of the picture because — even if a peace agreement is made between Ukraine and Russia — the approach of Ukraine’s NATO membership would certainly reignite it.