Opinion: How long can America continue to be arsenal to the world?

Opinion by David A. Andelman

(CNN) — To put it simply, the United States cannot readily support two major wars while preparing for the possibility of a third. That’s a hard, indeed ineluctable reality — one that is becoming increasingly and painfully evident by the hour.

America’s military industrial base is already stretched by the ongoing war in Ukraine that Russia appears prepared to carry on to an indefinite future. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is now 20 months old and counting, questions were being raised about whether America was overextended as a superpower.

Now Israel is at war, a close ally that the Biden administration has pledged to support. And the scope of that conflict could grow: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has imposed a blockade in Gaza and has threatened an invasion, which could in turn draw a reaction from Iran or lead to any one of a host of other nations to get involved.

Also looming ominously is a potential challenge by China for control of Taiwan— which all too often appears to teeter on the brink of conflict.

In my view, the US is on the side of the angels in all three situations, two of which are full-blown shooting wars. But rivals are counting on America’s fallibility: The nation’s resources are far from limitless, and the wildly conflicting political currents roiling its democracy have revealed that it hardly speaks with one voice in terms of its willingness to engage militarily in all three – even though Washington continues to say it is prepared to defend right over might.

During Ukraine’s counteroffensive, now drawing to a close as winter approaches, its guns have been firing some 6,000 rounds per day, though it has wanted to burn through 10,000 daily — a fraction of the 60,000 a day Russia has been hammering into Ukrainian positions, cities and towns. Last July, even before this year’s counter-offensive got underway, the US disclosed it had supplied some 2 million artillery rounds since the start of the Russian invasion.

The Biden administration has increased America’s production of artillery rounds — especially the benchmark 155mm round — from an anemic pre-war level of 14,000 a month to 24,000 per month today, with plans to increase that number soon to 28,000 per month. But it is unclear how many of those rounds would be earmarked for Ukraine — and officials in Washington aren’t saying.

The US is also faced with the increasingly challenging task of procuring high-tech components for cruise missiles, sophisticated artillery weapons and drones, even as prices for radiation-resistant capacitors and semiconductor chips have risen by 300% and the cost of lithium components is up 400%, according to a Defense News survey.

Meanwhile, there has been no public discussion of expanding arms shipments to Israel so far, although the Biden administration has signaled to Congress that such a request may be not too far off. The latest 10-year Memorandum of Understanding from 2018 through 2028 pledged $38 billion in military aid. Israel has already purchased 50 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the most advanced stealth jet fighter ever made, and was the world’s first foreign operator. For 2023, Congress authorized some $520 million in joint US-Israel defense programs, most of it for missile defense.

But most independent observers believe the pace of Hamas missile attacks means that Israel will need urgent and immediate replenishment of munitions for its Iron Dome defense systems.

The real imponderable, of course, is whether Israel’s blockade of Gaza — or an outright land and sea invasion of the territory — might lead to Iran’s entry into the war. Tehran’s involvement might be indirect, through supply of weapons or other military assistance. The question then, would be what form Israeli retaliation against Iran might take.

And then there is Taiwan, where there is no active military conflict currently underway, but where the threat of hostilities seems to loom ever closer, an issue of abiding concern for US military leaders.

“China’s leaders have yet to renounce the use of military force, while they increasingly turn to the [Peoples Liberation Army] as an instrument of coercion in support of their revisionist aims, conducting more dangerous activities in and around the Taiwan Strait,” Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee last month. 

“China remains the department’s top pacing challenge…meeting our commitments consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act — providing Taiwan with self-defense capabilities, as well as maintaining our own capacity to resist any use of force that jeopardizes the security of the people on Taiwan,” Ratner added.

The administration, Ratner observed, would expect a “bipartisan, whole-of-government commitment to strengthening Taiwan’s self-defense.” At least in his public testimony Ratner did not put a price tag on any of this. That commitment appeared open-ended. But a third potential conflict straining the nation’s military stockpile seems more than even the capacious American stockpiles or even its military-industrial complex can sustain for long.

Finally, there is the critical — though rarely mentioned— issue of how the drain on American munitions would impact the nation’s ability to defend itself. At a background briefing on Monday, a senior defense department official told reporters, “We are able to continue our support both to Ukraine, Israel, and maintain our own global readiness.”

At some point, however, dollars in the pipeline to supply weaponry will need to be reauthorized for all three regions, with hardly a totally clear path to success for either Ukraine or Israel, let alone the Pacific theater. The Biden administration has already warned leaders of the House and Senate and leading committee members that it will be coming to Congress soon seeking new aid authorizations for Israel.

The White House is reported to be considering piggybacking a reauthorization of aid to Ukraine in an aid package for Israel, which may have broader bipartisan support. One administration official told the Washington Post that such an approach is especially appealing since it also “jams the far right,” including many members of Congress who have been staunchly opposed to continued aid to Ukraine while strongly backing additional military support for Israel.

Aid for Taiwan would not be included in such a bill, but generally speaking there is broad, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for anything that might help the United States prevail in a faceoff with Beijing. Indeed, in August, the White House asked Congress to approve an arms program for Taiwan as part of a supplemental budget request for Ukraine – since the potential threat to Taiwan’s security is seen as being a matter of equal urgency.

On Tuesday, Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, insisted that America’s support for Israel would not impact its “promise to continue supporting Ukraine.” But without a doubt, Russia and China are watching from the sidelines to see how all of these resource issues play out.

Nothing should stand between Washington providing vitally needed support for Ukraine and Israel, nor should there be any ambiguity about Washington’s backing for Taiwan. The US and its closest allies must make clear that they will provide whatever resources are necessary to bolster democracy in all three theaters of actual or potential conflict. That would be the ideal the US must strive for.

But at some point, there may need to be a moment of reckoning. Over time, this may well mean that the nations the US has been aiding may themselves have to make unenviable choices — decisions that seem unthinkable now to them certainly and to us, but which may in the end prove inevitable.

Will Ukraine ultimately have to face the prospect of losing Crimea? Will Israel have to make a modicum of concessions to demonstrate to Palestinians there is an alternative to perpetual conflict? The illusion that the US will always come to the rescue and provide military weaponry to prop up a democracy in need may be comforting — but it may also one day clash with some hard realities.

Perhaps rather than continuing to be seen as an arsenal to the democratic world, America eventually may need to be a better, more adroit partner in helping each nation we befriend find its own path to a more lasting and sustainable peace.

The-CNN-Wire
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