America’s ‘lacklustre’ Ukrainian response is a symptom of longer standing issues

Often likened to Hitler’s annexation of Austria or the Czech Sudetenland in the immediate years preceding the dictator’s invasion of Poland in 1939, which formally kicked off the Second World War (despite Imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931), no matter what way you look at it, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has the potential to fundamentally reshape the global balance of power.

Like the island democracy of Taiwan, the vast, grass steppes of Ukraine have become one of the dual epicentres of global geopolitical competition and great power competition between the United States-led world order and the newly emerging Russo/Chinese-led world order.

However, more than 18 months into the devastating conflict, with momentum stalling on both sides, questions are beginning to surface about the capacity of the United States to continue its materiel and financial support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s impressive leadership and defiance in the face of Putin’s invasion.

This uncomfortable reality is reinforced by comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 22 December 2022, in which he highlighted concerns about the capacity of the United States to directly deter and engage a competing great power: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”

Secretary Blinken’s concerning statements were equally reinforced by US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, who, in a testimony before the US House armed services committee, said, “If there was a war on the Korean peninsula or great power war between the United States and Russia or the United States and China, the consumption rates would be off the charts … So I’m concerned. I know the secretary is ... we’ve got a ways to go to make sure our stockpiles are prepared for the real contingencies.”

For Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in a piece for The Atlantic, titled, Ukraine Isn’t the Reason the U.S. Is Unprepared for War, all of this means one thing: “A lack of defence production has created an alarming gap between America’s strategy and its capabilities”.

Time to share the blame

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For Schake, the growing shortfalls in the defence production levels across the once formally unrivalled industrial power of the United States has been brewing away in the background, serving as a key part of the broader political theatre that has characterised American public debate over the past three decades.

In particular, the growing recognition, and indeed, admittance by key elements of the US government, namely Blinken and Milley among the most high-profile names, that the US itself would struggle to provide munitions, weapons systems, and other key inputs for a war effort serves to highlight impact of industrial hollowing out and consolidation in the years following the end of the Cold War.

Schake explains, “Our country could very well lose a large-scale war for lack of weapons and ammunition – but not because of aid to Ukraine. In a major conflict, the US would run out of munitions in a few weeks, and in less than a week for some crucial categories. The quantity of weapons we are providing Ukraine is marginal compared with necessary weapons that we have not stocked.”

America isn’t alone in facing this uncomfortable reality, particularly as the world becomes increasingly competitive and unpredictable in the era of multipolarity and great power competition, as by now the very real limitations on the industrial capacity, and indeed, warfighting capability of key US allies like the United Kingdom, Germany and others, including Australia, have become apparent in recent years.

Schake highlights this further stating, “Nor can we rely on our allies to supply themselves or engineer a lend-lease program to send us weapons if we should be fighting but they are not. For instance, even before it began sending weapons to Ukraine, the British military was so poorly stocked that in a major war, it would have run out of ammunition in a week.”

Domestic American political machinations equally play a part in the “new normal” which leaves the United States and its allies, including Australia, increasingly vulnerable to being out-produced and out-competed.

“The current defence budget contains US$109 billion in spending for non-defence items that belong more properly in the budgets of other parts of the government, such as the Department of Education. Administrations tend to put such items in the defence budget because it’s the only appropriations bill guaranteed to pass, and politicians like to claim that they are increasing defence spending. But the United States is not focusing its spending on essential weapons and ammunition,” Schake explains.

Expanding on this, Schake highlights the impact of domestic political brinkmanship on US defence spending, particularly if the era of Obama’s sequestration returns, stating, “Congress is also to blame for the deficiencies in funding. Debt-ceiling stand-offs, sequestrations, and a failure to pass spending bills on time wreak havoc on DOD. As part of the debt-ceiling agreement, unless spending bills are passed by the end of the calendar year, Elaine McCusker and John Ferrari of the American Enterprise Institute calculate that sequestration spending caps will effectively cut defence spending by 8.6 per cent.”

If all of this sounds uncomfortably familiar as an Australian, don’t worry, you’re not alone, it seems politics really is the same everywhere you go.

Step up to peer competition

This predicament only becomes more concerning when measured against the costs that would be incurred during a potential peer competitor confrontation with the likes of China presenting a major threat to the security and prominence of the post-Second World War order.

“The adversary capable of forcing a high-intensity war on the United States is, of course, China. And China is giving worrisome indications of interest in doing so. The US intelligence community assesses that China spends roughly US$700 billion a year on defence, approaching US levels of spending. It is on course to triple its nuclear arsenal by 2035. US intelligence assesses that China aims to be able to conquer Taiwan by 2027,” Schake explains.

Expanding on this further and highlighting the startling differences between the glory days of US and indeed, broader allied industrial capacity and the hollowed out industrial economies of the Western alliance network by comparing it to the rival capacity of China’s own industrial economy, Schake states, “In 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz fought on the Midway Islands with only three aircraft carriers at his disposal. Less than three years later, he commenced operations against the Marianas with 15 new, larger, and faster carriers to feed into the fight. China has built a defence industry capable of such rapid production – but today, the United States couldn’t pull it off.

“The US defence industry is sized for peacetime production. Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that at current production rates, just replacing the 155mm artillery ammunition and the Javelin and Stinger missiles provided to Ukraine will take more than five years – and those pre-Ukraine inventories were themselves wholly inadequate,” Schake adds.

It is clear now that the United States and its allies across the “developed” Western World are no longer in a position of strength from the economic and industrial aspect, effectively leaving these once powerful industrial nations vulnerable to wild oscillations and shocks that serve to undermine the benefits of the world’s “just in time” supply chains developed throughout the rise of unfettered globalisation.

We’ve effectively killed competition

This is further complicated by both the regulatory and legislative environments that have emerged since the end of the Cold War which saw a rapid and massive consolidation of the once diverse US defence industrial base, hindering competition and aggregating power in an increasingly small number of viable defence contractors capable of meeting the requirements of the US Armed Forces.

Schake explains this, saying, “In 1990, the United States had 54 companies that produced major defence articles; now it has just five. America reaped a peace dividend after the Cold War, then continued to take one even as the world grew more dangerous.”

Going further to explain the impact of the regulatory and legislative environments which emerged during the post-Cold War “peace dividend” which continues to shape the defence postures, policies, and procurement policies of both the United States and Australia, in particular, Schake states, “The United States has hampered its defence industry with regulations that don’t allow it to access economies of scale.

“Factories operated by allies abroad could help the United States build munitions much faster, and domestic businesses, especially those specialising in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies, could help build them much better. But the International Traffic in Arms Regulations have erected barriers that deter partners both at home and abroad,” Schake adds.

Ultimately, all of this combines to demonstrate that the ongoing support for Ukraine is only a major burden on the US and broader Western alliance network because we have set ourselves up to fail as a result of a combination of wishful thinking during the post-Cold War era and the government bureaucracy that has encouraged a consolidation of defence industry partners effectively limiting competition.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, these challenges spell major dramas for the broader US global alliance network, with major implications for the future of Taiwan in the event of any major action by the People’s Republic of China and by extension, the post-Second World War order upon which Australia depends on.

Recognising these challenges doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. These challenges aren’t insurmountable, particularly when the solutions are shared across an aggregation of allied partners.

Rather, these challenges present unique and exciting opportunities for nations like Australia, which is uniquely positioned to maximise the opportunities presented both directly in terms of precision-guided munitions, but more broadly, across a range of dual-use technologies and consumer goods as a result of the advanced manufacturing technologies developed in concert with responding to these challenges.

Despite the opportunities present, it appears as though Australia is falling back into its default position of “she’ll be right”.

Meanwhile, nations across the globe, and in particular in the Indo-Pacific, double down on the disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and have actively begun to marshal their own national power and cohesively coordinate in preparation for the post-COVID-19, multipolar world order.

With this in mind, it is critical to understand that perhaps, unlike almost any other nation, Australia is at a precipice and both the Australian public and the nation’s political and strategic leaders need to decide what they want the nation to be: Do they want the nation to become an economic, political, and strategic backwater caught between two competing great empires and a growing cluster of periphery great powers? Or do we “have a crack” and actively establish itself as a regional great power with all the benefits it entails?

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the sociopolitical and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.

Equally, we have to begin to confront the question of “What sort of region and world do we want to live in and hand down to our children?”, for if Australia does not embrace the opportunities presented by the Indo-Pacific and more broadly the era of competition that is coming to characterise the 21st century, we will have the world created for us by nations that hold their national interests as sacrosanct and put them before all other considerations.

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