To help thwart a full-blown Russian invasion of Eastern Europe is as good a reason as any to expend munitions.

Noah Rothman makes a solid case that the Defense Department’s decision to halt the delivery of weapons to Ukraine is a strategic blunder with potentially dire implications. The choice to deprive Ukrainian forces of air defense missiles and precision munitions already en route, according to Politico, “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.” To Noah’s excellent response (that “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”), I would add a question for the Pentagon: What are those munitions stockpiles for, if not this war?

The assessment by policymakers such as Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, of the situation in Ukraine has long been that we cannot send too many weapons to aid the besieged nation lest we run too low. But weapons stockpiles do not exist merely to sit around in a warehouse. Their purpose is to be used — or, at least, to be available for use — in a conflict that demands enormous military resources.

But there is currently a rather large conflict, in which the United States has already devoted a great deal of resources and vested much of its credibility. We are attempting to push back against a full-scale invasion by Russia, one of America’s strongest adversaries, against Eastern Europe. Russian victory in Ukraine would set up a direct confrontation between NATO allies whom we are sworn to defend and a vicious, expansionist state whose economy now depends on war. Such a confrontation — even assuming it never escalated into armed conflict — would require hundreds of billions in higher U.S. military spending and a far more fortified force posture in Europe. The stakes are plenty high enough. Colby and other “restrainers” seem to think that we should be saving weapons for a more urgent moment or pressing conflict than this. But such thinking discounts the urgency of this moment in Ukraine — and could, in fact, precipitate worse situations in Ukraine and elsewhere. 

During Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration likewise found a rationale for limiting what it sent to Ukraine: We cannot provide too much support, their thinking went, because doing so might provoke Russia to escalate, and we could have an even worse situation on our hands. But how much worse could things be for Ukraine? Short of dropping a nuclear bomb, Russia has not held any of its punches for over three years. It began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine to achieve violent regime change but has since had to settle for swallowing the nation’s territory and subjecting its residents to tyranny. It has sent hundreds of thousands of its own men into a meat grinder to advance the front line. It has relentlessly bombed Ukrainian population centers and vital infrastructure in an attempt to beat the country’s citizenry into submission. It has committed war crimes against the Ukrainian people and abducted their children to cleanse them of their national identity. What on earth were we waiting for them to do?

To be fair to the Defense Department, it is absolutely imperative that the U.S. military not run out of crucial munitions. But it is imperative precisely so that we are able to fight and win wars like the one we are already fighting, via proxy, in Ukraine. The proper response to weapons shortages is not for America to cut off its support to Ukraine but to surge our purchase and production of munitions commensurate with the danger of our time. It is disgraceful that we have not done so already. But a large-scale increase in weapons production is both possible and planned. The success of that effort will depend, in large part, on whether defense suppliers continue to receive orders for use in Ukraine.

Finally, as Noah explains, the way America treats Ukraine has implications for the way the world will treat us. The messages we send matter. Choosing to let Ukraine lose — to decline to put down serious threats where they presently exist — would make a war in which our weapons stockpiles would really run out much more likely. In a decade or so, we may look back and recognize that our strategic choice today was between expending American munitions now and expending those same munitions — as well as American lives — a bit later.