Helping Ukraine is important enough to Western governments to huff and puff about, but not enough to make sacrifices in provisioning it.

There is a really odd quality to the news cycle lately. For a few weeks, there was a controversy about whether the United States would continue to send arms to Ukraine. It proceeded roughly in a few stages.

The Pentagon announced that after a review of stockpiles, the U.S. wouldn’t be sending more weapons to Ukraine.

A news cycle kicked off, with outrage directed at Elbridge Colby, the prioritizer working in the Department of Defense.

Trump declared that Ukraine needed weapons. Various more hawkish advisers and influencers declared some kind of victory in the press. And even the Europeans seemed to be doing an uncharacteristic end-zone dance in the press. “With a heavy dose of Realpolitik, Germany and other European countries got the U.S. administration to aid Ukraine without directly confronting Putin.”

Then Trump announced the details of his plans, including punitive tariffs, potential secondary sanctions, and a plan for NATO to arm Ukraine from its stockpiles, and with its financing.

That is, Trump was going to arm Ukraine, but do it in a way that shifted the burden off our stockpiles and backlogs onto Europe’s, following somewhat the dire warnings from the Defense Department that he supposedly rejected.

In the days afterward, European officials complained about having to provide these weapons as Trump claimed credit. And then some nations like France and Italy outright rejected the plan, leaving it in limbo. Eight European countries have variously indicated some support for the plan initially, but very few details about who is surrendering what have been agreed upon.

And the media seems to have lost all interest in what was a weekslong series of news cycles.

My conclusion. This has demonstrated and dramatized, even more profoundly, the fundamental truth of this conflict. Western interests in Ukraine are highly moralized, but when it comes down to talking resources, we are severely limited. France and other European governments don’t love Trump’s plan because it means taking on a burden, and it commits them to relying more on America’s military-industrial complex, rather than building out their own. That these concerns are allowed to interrupt the project of resourcing Ukraine tells you all you need to know about the real priorities of Western governments. Helping Ukraine is important enough to them to huff and puff about, but not enough to make sacrifices in provisioning it.