A Ukrainian defeat due to American inconstancy will have farther-reaching implications for U.S. security than the present temporary pressure on its resources.
In the hours that followed U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear targets, the president’s critics devoted themselves to arguing that the attacks had been a tactical failure. Of course, they limited themselves to arguing tactics — whether the strikes could have been marginally more effective given the right intelligence, targeting information, ordnance — because claiming that the operation was a strategic failure would have been a hard sell.
The joint U.S.-Israeli mission cemented America’s relationship with Jerusalem, which has emerged from the wars imposed on it after the 10/7 massacre as the dominant military power in the region. The strikes confirmed that the United States is still willing to defend its interests by imposing costs on bad actors, state and non-state alike, that they cannot easily absorb. They confirmed that America’s tolerance for the diplomatic process has limits and that it will not quietly endure challenges to the geopolitical status quo forever.
With the news that the United States is cutting Ukraine off from access to American ordnance, the Trump administration risks sabotaging the message its Iran strikes conveyed.
“The decision was driven by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby,” Politico revealed. Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy and a longtime skeptic of America’s support for Ukraine’s cause, abruptly halted already scheduled shipments of munitions, including PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, AIM-7 and Hellfire Missiles, guided multiple-launch rocket systems, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and 155 millimeter artillery rounds.
As Politico conceded, the decision “was made after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles, leading to concerns that the total number of artillery rounds, air defense missiles and precision munitions was sinking, according to three people familiar with the issue.”
America’s enemies should not, however, mistake this unmistakable signal of weakness for weakness. Take it from the White House: “This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe,” an overcompensating statement from White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly read. “The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned — just ask Iran.”
Deterrence may be restored to the Middle East — at least, for now. But it is not restored to Europe, where Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s cities have grown in intensity and savagery in recent weeks. Of course, Russia and China are taking their cues from all of America’s actions. When it comes to Ukraine, the signals Washington is sending to our adversaries are contradictory.
Ukraine has done everything the Trump administration asked of it. It signed the onerous mineral rights deal with the Trump team. It dutifully participated in the peace process to which Trump seemed wedded, even when the Russian side did not. It supported Trump’s modest efforts to pressure Moscow into making concessions. That initiative culminated in Trump giving Russia just two weeks to come to the table in good faith — a deadline that expired three weeks ago. Indeed, Colby’s maneuver directly undermines remarks the president delivered at last week’s NATO summit, in which he castigated Vladimir Putin and seemed open to providing Ukraine with anti-missile interceptors.
It’s not clear right now if Trump was even read in on Colby’s initiative. If he was, the president was persuaded by the suggestion that America had reached the limits of its material capacity to defend its interests abroad and needed to make some tough decisions.
No one should dismiss the scale of the challenges before America’s defense industrial base as the global threat environment deteriorates and more of its frontline partners find themselves enmeshed in conflict with our mutual enemies. As the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan ably detailed, the U.S. is burning through air defense munitions “at an alarming rate,” and those arms will be necessary to deter Chinese aggression.
Granted. But if we’re evaluating Ukraine’s cause purely as a proxy theater in which we can pantomime messages meant for Beijing — a narrow outlook is contemptuous of our core security interests in Europe — let’s think about it from China’s perspective.
Forget for now that some of the munitions to which Ukraine won’t have access (the Vietnam-era AIM-7 air-to-air missile, for example, is not going to make or break America’s deterrent posture) have little to do with deterring the Chinese. Is the People’s Republic somehow going to rethink its desire for adventurism in the South China Sea because America is cutting off its frontline partners abroad? Will Beijing think twice about attacking Taiwan only because America has theoretically redoubled its commitment to the defense of Guam? Or does that posture convey Washington’s indecision, insecurity, and impatience with its beleaguered foreign partners?
America’s capacity to build and export the best-class weapons on earth is unrivaled, but it is also strained. These are not insurmountable challenges, though, as the “restrainers” so often imply. Critics of America’s obligations to Ukraine maintain that they are — that America is an all but spent force that must narrow its commitments to Ukraine in ways that just happen to coincide with their policy prescriptions from the outset of Putin’s war and long before America’s ordnance stockpiles started looking rather thin.
The consequences of a Ukrainian defeat as a direct result of American inconstancy will have farther-reaching implications for U.S. security than the present temporary pressure on its resources.
“Air defense won’t win a war for you,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “but the absence of it will lose one fast.” Giving up on Ukraine is what Trump’s brain trust in the Pentagon has long sought, but it’s not clear that their goal is also Trump’s.
His administration will pay a reputational price for letting Ukraine burn. It will not lead the news, but Ukraine’s torturous exsanguination will become background radiation that Americans will slowly, bitterly absorb. They’ll catch glimpses now and then of the horrors their leaders tacitly sanction, and they’ll resent seeing America once again abandon its friends for fear of its enemies. And when Trump is gone, he will bequeath to his successor a more dangerous Europe that demands an even greater commitment of American resources as it and its allies scramble to contain the land-hungry despot in the Kremlin.
These are not desirable outcomes. The president should avoid them. And for a time, it seemed like he was so inclined. If that was ever the case, the Pentagon didn’t get the memo.