1). “Blinken concedes war is lost-offers Kremlin Ukrainian demilitarization; Crimea, Donbas, Zaporozhye; and restriction of new tanks to Western Ukraine if there is no Russian offensive”, Feb 06, 2023, John Helmer, MROnline(dot)org, at <https://mronline.org/2023/02/06/blinken-concedes-war-is-lost-offers-kremlin-ukrainian-demilitarization-crimea-donbas-zaporozhye-and-restriction-of-new-tanks-to-western-ukraine-if-there-is-no-russian-offensive/>: Originally published: Jan 25, 2023, John Helmer, Dances with Bears, at <http://johnhelmer.net/blinken-concedes-war-is-lost-offers-kremlin-ukrainian-demilitarization-crimea-donbass-zaporozhe-and-restriction-of-new-tanks-to-western-ukraine-if-there-is-no-russian-offensive/>
2). “Breaking Russia? More like breaking ourselves: America’s days as the primary player in Europe will close fast without a radical policy shift on Ukraine”, February 11, 2023, Brandon J Weichert, Asia Times, at < https://asiatimes.com/2023/02/breaking-russia-more-like-breaking-ourselves/ >
3). “US and NATO lack capability to supply a long war: As weapons inventories dwindle, there’s little chance the West today can build a surge hardware-making capacity”, June 24, 2022, Stephen Bryen, Asia Times, at <https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/us-and-nato-lack-capability-to-supply-a-long-war/ >
4). “U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals”, Nov. 26, 2022, Updated Nov. 29, 2022, Steven Erlanger and Lara Jakes, New York Times, at <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/world/europe/nato-weapons-shortage-ukraine.html>
Introduction by dmorista: In Article 1)., “Blinken concedes war is lost-offers Kremlin Ukrainian demilitarization; …”, the author points out that, behind the scenes and outside of the triumphalist scenarios being fed to the U.S. and European publics, the logistical and on-the-ground reality of the War in Ukraine has led to some hard bargaining on the part of U.S. / NATO political and military leaders. Bargaining and negotiations that do not bother to consult the Ukrainian Coup Government. The easiest part of that war, for the far-right regime in Kiev and their supporters and suppliers in The West, has now passed by. The largely deindustrialized and hollowed-out societies of the U.S. and the NATO powers have given Ukraine a dangerously large proportion of their weapons and munitions. The Ukrainian forces have had a somewhat surprising level of success in the field, but they have arrived at a point where they are running out of equipment and ammunition; and the U.S. / NATO cannot continue to supply them more. Just one example is artillery shells for 155 mm cannons. The U.S. can make 14,000 a month, the Ukrainians have been using those shells at a much higher rate. At times the Ukrainians have been firing over 7,000 shells per day. The U.S. supplied Ukraine with 800,000 shells to feed the 126 M777 155 mm howitzers given to Ukraine. The shells have all been fired, and many of the howitzers that use them have been lost in the fighting.
The basic outline of the Ukrainian state has changed over the years; with Ukraine growing in size and in ethnic and linguistic complexity as various Czars, as well as Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev, added territory to Ukraine. Blinken and other pragmatists in the U.S. / NATO hierarchy would take whatever actions they consider strategically favorable to their political entities; the Ukrainians will have to accept what is decided by them, complaining and using their public relations capabilities but probably with little or no effect. A worst case scenario for the Coup Regime in Kiev would be a shrinkage to the “Ukrainian Core Regions” as shown (in yellow and labeled “by the Russian Tsars 1654 - 1917” and dark blue labeled “Ukrainian Territory 1654") in the map below. Probably the light blue area labeled as “Now Part of Ukrainian Core Region (inner)”, and “Carpathian and Hungarian Oriented Regions (outer)” would stay with a rump Ukraine. But even that is questionable as the typical ethnic and linguistic factions might see the partition of Ukraine as their opportunity to secede. But there can be no doubt that Crimea will remain part of Russia as it was from 1783 - 1991 and then again from 2014 to 2023. Some significant part, or all, of the purple “Russian Oriented Regions” area, labeled “By Lenin 1922”, will become part of Russia or some sort of semi-autonomous area; with close relations with and protection by Russia.
The U.S. planners and strategists have larger fish to fry. The U.S. military has complained loudly and forcefully that they have to keep the equipment and munitions they still have for a prospective Proxy War, or even a direct war, with China over Taiwan.
The ongoing Proxy War in Ukraine is demonstrating some predictable and, for the geostrategic position of the U.S. / NATO, disturbing characteristics. Competent military analysts such as Brandon Weichert who wrote article 2 below, “Breaking Russia? More like breaking ourselves …” and Stephen Bryen who wrote article 3 below “US and NATO lack capability to supply a long war: …”, were skeptical from the start of the war.
The grandiose allusions and Chest Thumping in Washington D.C., and in the salons of the U.S. imperialists around the country, always make comparisons with WW 2 and the role of the U.S. as the “Arsenal of Democracy”. The U.S. now more closely resembles Britain in WW 2, while China is much more like the U.S. of the interwar and WW 2 years; at least as far as productive capabilities are concerned. The U.S. would certainly not be the late stage empires to get involved in wars that are beyond its capacity to resolve. In fact as Paul Kennedy observed in his seminal book The rise and fall of the great powers: economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000, the U.S. has a classic case of Imperial Overstretch.
The basic logistical situation was expressed, in the Bryen article, by “Admiral Sir Tony Radkin, who is chief of the UK Defense Staff ….
“Speaking to the House of Lords International and Defense Committee, Radkin said, ‘We are then talking in years, because you cannot whistle up with modern weapons a quick production line. Yes, you can churn out shells and artillery, but even at the not super-sophisticated end, even at the modest end of an NLAW [anti-tank] weapon, then that’s going to take several years to get back to our original stocks.’ ”
The U.S. and many of the NATO economies will need 2 - 5 years, or more, to build up the industrial capacity to produce the weapons need NOW for the Proxy War in Ukraine. Article 4, “U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals”, generally reviews the munitions and weapons supply and reserve situation for the U.S. and other NATO countries.
1). “Blinken concedes war is lost-offers Kremlin Ukrainian demilitarization; Crimea, Donbas, Zaporozhye; and restriction of new tanks to Western Ukraine if there is no Russian offensive”, Feb 06, 2023, John Helmer, MROnline(dot)org, at <https://mronline.org/2023/02/06/blinken-concedes-war-is-lost-offers-kremlin-ukrainian-demilitarization-crimea-donbas-zaporozhye-and-restriction-of-new-tanks-to-western-ukraine-if-there-is-no-russian-offensive/>: Originally published: Jan 25, 2023, John Helmer, Dances with Bears, at <http://johnhelmer.net/blinken-concedes-war-is-lost-offers-kremlin-ukrainian-demilitarization-crimea-donbass-zaporozhe-and-restriction-of-new-tanks-to-western-ukraine-if-there-is-no-russian-offensive/>
David Ignatius (lead image, left) has been a career-long mouthpiece for the U.S. State Department. He has just been called in by the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) to convey an urgent new message to President Vladimir Putin, the Security Council, and the General Staff in Moscow.
For the first time since the special military operation began last year, the war party in Washington is offering terms of concession to Russia’s security objectives explicitly and directly, without the Ukrainians in the way.
The terms Blinken has told Ignatius to print appeared in the January 25 edition of the Washington Post. The paywall can be avoided by reading on.
The territorial concessions Blinken is tabling include Crimea, the Donbass, and the Zaporozhye, Kherson “land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia”. West of the Dnieper River, north around Kharkov, and south around Odessa and Nikolaev, Blinken has tabled for the first time U.S. acceptance of “a demilitarized status” for the Ukraine. Also, U.S. agreement to restrict the deployment of HIMARS, U.S. and NATO infantry fighting vehicles, and the Abrams and Leopard tanks to a point in western Ukraine from which they can “maneuver… as a deterrent against future Russian attacks.”
This is an offer for a tradeoff—partition through a demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the east of the Ukraine in exchange for a halt to the planned Russian offensive destroying the fortifications, rail hubs, troop cantonments, and airfields in the west, between the Polish and Romanian borders, Kiev and Lvov, and an outcome Blinken proposes for both sides to call “a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity”.
Also in the proposed Blinken deal there is the offer of a direct U.S.-Russian agreement on “an eventual postwar military balance”; “no World War III”; and no Ukrainian membership of NATO with “security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5.”
Blinken has also told the Washington Post to announce the U.S. will respect “Putin’s tripwire for nuclear escalation”, and accept the Russian “reserve force includ[ing] strategic bombers, certain precision-guided weapons and, of course, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.”
President Putin has offered a hint of the Russian reply he discussed with the Stavka and the Security Council last week.
Putin told a meeting with university students on Wednesday, hours after Blinken’s publication. “I think that people like you,” the president said,
most clearly and most accurately understand the need for what Russia is now doing to support our citizens in these territories, including Lugansk, Donetsk, the Donbass area as a whole, and Kherson and Zaporozhye. The goal, as I have explained many times, is primarily to protect the people and Russia from the threats that they are trying to create for us in our own historical territories that are adjacent to us. We cannot allow this. So, it is extremely important when young people like you defend the interests of their small and large Motherland with arms in their hands and do so consciously.”
Read on, very carefully, understanding that nothing a U.S. official says, least of all through the mouths of Blinken, Ignatius, and the Washington Post is trusted by the Russians; and understanding that what Putin and the Stavka say they mean by Russia’s “adjacent historical territories” and the “small and large Motherland” has been quite clear.
Follow what Blinken told Ignatius to print, before Putin issued his reply. The propaganda terms have been highlighted in bold to mean the opposite–the public positions from which Blinken is trying to retreat and keep face.
The Biden administration, convinced that Vladimir Putin has failed in his attempt to erase Ukraine, has begun planning for an eventual postwar military balance that will help Kyiv deter any repetition of Russia’s brutal invasion.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined his strategy for the Ukrainian endgame and postwar deterrence during an interview on Monday at the State Department. The conversation offered an unusual exploration of some of the trickiest issues surrounding resolution of a Ukraine conflict that has threatened the global order.
Blinken explicitly commended Germany’s military backing for Ukraine at a time when Berlin is getting hammered by some other NATO allies for not providing Leopard tanks quickly to Kyiv. “Nobody would have predicted the extent of Germany’s military support” when the war began, Blinken said. “This is a sea change we should recognize.”
He also underlined President Biden’s determination to avoid direct military conflict with Russia, even as U.S. weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force. “Biden has always been emphatic that one of his requirements in Ukraine is that there be no World War III,” Blinken said.
Russia’s colossal failure to achieve its military goals, Blinken believes, should now spur the United States and its allies to begin thinking about the shape of postwar Ukraine–and how to create a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity and allows it to deter and, if necessary, defend against any future aggression. In other words, Russia should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.
Blinken’s deterrence framework is somewhat different from last year’s discussions with Kyiv about security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5. Rather than such a formal treaty pledge, some U.S. officials increasingly believe the key is to give Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself. Security will be ensured by potent weapons systems–especially armor and air defense–along with a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union.
The Pentagon’s current stress on providing Kyiv with weapons and training for maneuver warfare reflects this long-term goal of deterrence. “The importance of maneuver weapons isn’t just to give Ukraine strength now to regain territory but as a deterrent against future Russian attacks,” explained a State Department official familiar with Blinken’s thinking.
Maneuver is the future.
The conversation with Blinken offered some hints about the intense discussions that have gone on for months within the administration about how the war in Ukraine can be ended and future peace maintained. The administration’s standard formula is that all decisions must ultimately be made by Ukraine, and Blinken reiterated that line. He also backs Ukraine’s desire for significant battlefield gains this year. But the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are also thinking ahead.
Crimea is a particular point of discussion. There is a widespread view in Washington and Kyiv that regaining Crimea by military force may be impossible. Any Ukrainian military advances this year in Zaporizhzhia oblast, the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia, could threaten Russian control. But an all-out Ukrainian campaign to seize the Crimean Peninsula is unrealistic, many U.S. and Ukrainian officials believe. That’s partly because Putin has indicated that an assault on Crimea would be a tripwire for nuclear escalation.
The administration shares Ukraine’s insistence that Crimea, which was seized by Russia in 2014, must eventually be returned. But in the short run, what’s crucial for Kyiv is that Crimea no longer serve as a base for attacks against Ukraine. One formula that interests me would be a demilitarized status, with questions of final political control deferred. Ukrainian officials told me last year that they had discussed such possibilities with the administration.
As Blinken weighs options in Ukraine, he has been less worried about escalation risks than some observers. That’s partly because he believes Russia is checked by NATO’s overwhelming power. “Putin continues to hold some things in reserve because of his misplaced fear that NATO might attack Russia,” explained the official familiar with Blinken’s thinking. This Russian reserve force includes strategic bombers, certain precision-guided weapons and, of course, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.
Blinken’s refusal to criticize Germany on the issue of releasing Leopard tanks illustrates what has been more than a year of alliance management to keep the pro-Ukraine coalition from fracturing. Blinken has logged hundreds of hours–on the phone, in video meetings and in trips abroad–to keep this coalition intact.
This cohesiveness will become even more important as the Ukraine war moves toward an endgame. This year, Ukraine and its allies will keep fighting to expel Russian invaders. But as in the final years of World War II, planning has already begun for the postwar order–and construction of a system of military and political alliances that can restore and maintain the peace that Russia shattered.
Highlighted in bold type in Blinken’s text is the phrase, “a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union”. This is Blinken’s message to the Kremlin that the U.S. wants to preserve Ukraine’s agricultural economy, its grain export ports, and the trade terms agreed with the European Union before the war. It is also Blinken’s acknowledgement that Vladimir Zelensky’s move early this week to force the resignations and dismissals of senior officials means the U.S. is calling the shots in Kiev and Lvov.
Nothing is revealed in Blinken’s offer “for the Ukrainian endgame and postwar deterrence” of how, and who on the U.S. and Russian sides, to negotiate directly on the particulars. Instead, there is the hint that if the Russians agree to trust the Americans and delay the planned offensive, and if they allow the rail lines to remain open between Poland and Lvov, the Americans will reciprocate by keeping the Abrams and Leopard tank deliveries in verifiable laagers west of Kiev.
As Russian officials have been making clear for months, no U.S. terms of agreement can be trusted on paper, and nothing at all which Blinken says. A well-informed independent military analyst comments on the Russian options:
The best response is continue the special military operation, destroy the Ukrainian military in their present pockets, complete de-electrification and destruction of the logistics, then either take everything east of the Dnieper or establish a de facto DMZ, including Kharkov. Blinken and the others cannot be trusted to follow through if they think they have a chance to stall for time. The Ukrainian Nazis are conspicuously absent from this proposal—and they remain to be dealt with. We know there will be no end to trouble if the Russian de-nazification objective against them stops now.
Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful.
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2). “Breaking Russia? More like breaking ourselves: America’s days as the primary player in Europe will close fast without a radical policy shift on Ukraine”, February 11, 2023, Brandon J Weichert, Asia Times, at < https://asiatimes.com/2023/02/breaking-russia-more-like-breaking-ourselves/ >
(Brandon J Weichert is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (both Republic Book Publishers), and Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books). He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.)
“We’re going to bleed the Russians in the field!” was what one senior US Air Force official proudly claimed at an event I was speaking at last year.
It made sense. At the time, Russia had illegally invaded its independent neighbor, Ukraine, and the world was reeling from the shock of that event.
Of course, I had reservations about this claim.
After all, Russia was a nuclear great power in possession of the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world and they were invading a nation right on their border whereas the Americans were an ocean and a continent away—with other strategic concerns to contend with in the Middle East and Asia.
Playing Risk while drunk
For too long Washington has refused to think strategically about some of the major foreign policy issues of our time. In the rare instance where Washington’s policymakers do think strategically, the strategies they concoct seem less like realistic attempts at applying state power and more like they were conceived over a game of Risk while under the heavy influence of alcohol.
Such is the case with the current American preoccupation in Ukraine.
The Russians have invaded Ukraine. They’ve committed their entire society to the war. In the words of popular geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, this is “Russia’s last war.” Their society will not survive beyond the decade and Russia’s economy and political system will collapse because Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has overstretched in Ukraine.
All these statements may be true. Washington’s leadership has decided to test the limits of these assumptions by throwing everything into supporting non-NATO member Ukraine – even if it risks another world war.
What if things don’t go as planned? In war, of course, plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy.
The reasoning in Washington goes like this: for the “low cost” of Ukrainian lives and American taxpayer dollars, the West can end Putin’s strategic threat to the United States and its NATO partners.
Throw in some generous rhetoric of saving democracy and accusing any skeptics of the plan of being new Neville Chamberlains and you’ve got yourselves a winning dynamic. Besides, no Americans are dying. It’s not like Iraq or Afghanistan. This is a postmodern, “clean” great power war—and the Russians can do nothing to stop us.
This is the thinking. And, my friends, I’m here to tell you this is the same kind of two-dimensional analysis that got us mired in the failed Middle East wars of the last 20 years. While there may not (yet) be large US armies in Ukraine, the fact remains that the same kind of wishful thinking that got us stuck in Iraq has now ensnared the United States in an unwinnable war in Ukraine.
Think about it: we’re told that Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, is Winston Churchill. Certainly, Zelensky is doing his best to save his nation and that is an admirable act. Despite his good press in the West, however, he’s less Churchill and more Ahmed Chalabi.
Our brand is failure
For those who need reminding, Chalabi was a corrupt, Iranian-backed Iraqi exile who dreamed of replacing Saddam Hussein in a post-invasion Iraq. He and his fellow Iraqi exiles connived the gullible neoconservatives who surrounded former president George W Bush into invading Iraq based on less than reliable intelligence.
After toppling Saddam Hussein, though, the plan went off the rails. Chalabi’s group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC) proved itself incapable of garnering popular support from the Iraqi people in a post-Saddam Iraq or of being a reliable partner to the Americans in Iraq.
But, boy, did the so-called strategy that Washington’s geniuses craft sound amazing on paper!
Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Americans believed they would handily rid themselves of the persistent nuisance that Saddam Hussein had posed our country–because he was, according to the power-hungry exiles, building nuclear bombs and sharing that capability with al Qaeda—and then plant US military forces in the center of the Middle East to “stabilize” the entire region.
Meanwhile, the Americans would install a pro-American democratic regime under the control of Chalabi and would recoup whatever economic losses were incurred from the invasion by exploiting Iraq’s bountiful oil wealth. Plus, the Americans would insert themselves in the heart of the global oil trade by capturing Iraq’s magnificent oil supplies.
Perfect plan; not-so-perfect results. Democracy did not arise in Iraq. The oil wealth was not used to recoup America’s financial losses. Today, the Americans are out of Iraq and no longer sit atop the strategic oil flows there.
But, hey, it made for a great white paper in 2002.
Far from stabilizing the region, of course, America’s insertion of forces permanently into the region turned the resource-rich area into a hotbed of anti-Americanism. The US intervention exacerbated the Islamist threat posed to the US, too.
Today, Islamic extremist groups have proliferated beyond Afghanistan to just about every part of the Greater Middle East while at the same time the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has created a power vacuum that anti-American Iran is filling.
Here we are coming up on the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and the Washington foreign policy establishment has made the identical mistake that it had made back then—only this time in Ukraine, against a major nuclear power, Russia.
We committed ourselves to a plan that had no bearing on reality and then we told ourselves it’ll work out, even when it clearly wasn’t going to go as advertised.
We broke NATO, not Russia
Now with news breaking from the controversial investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, that last September the Nordstream pipeline connecting bountiful and cheap Russian natural gas to Europe via Germany may have been sabotaged by the United States, an entirely new element of this slow-rolling disaster in Europe unfolds.
Washington told the world it was supporting Ukraine “to preserve” NATO (despite the fact that Ukraine was not a member of NATO). Yet, to keep Germany—a major NATO member—on-side in the Russian-Ukraine war, Washington supposedly conducted a covert attack on Germany’s critical civilian infrastructure that will have lasting, negative consequences for the German economy.
With this news now in the open, how does Washington think the German people will react?
There is in Germany today a large–and growing–anti-NATO and pro-Russian Far Right and Far Left. This news, combined with the terrible economic conditions that the war has brought on, will likely lead to the end of the pro-NATO government there and the rise of a government that will weaken NATO more than America’s feckless behavior already has.
As this happens, Russia continues plodding along in Ukraine, bleeding that country dry of its blood and the US taxpayer of their treasure. All that America’s intervention in Ukraine has thus far achieved is to totally militate Russia against Ukraine and the West–meaning that no deal to save the Ukrainians will be made anytime soon.
Russian forces will be that much closer to NATO’s eastern flank and Moscow may even decide to escalate further against NATO in retaliation for their ham-fisted efforts at “breaking the Russian army in the field.”
Washington hasn’t broken the Russian military at all. It’s broken its own power–and NATO–in the mindless pursuit of defeating a great power rival, like Russia, without actually fighting it. In so doing, it may end up having to fight Russia only from a much weaker position than what it had at the start of the Russo-Ukraine War.
This isn’t strategy. This is ideological naivete. And it’s risking another world war.
What to do next?
For America to get out of its current predicament, it must end its unflinching commitment to Ukraine and instead focus on shoring up NATO’s threatened eastern flank. NATO was a defensive multilateral alliance, not a vehicle for unilateral American power projection.
If Washington can get back to viewing NATO that way, a geopolitical catastrophe might yet still be avoided. Washington and Brussels must work to restore a semblance of diplomacy with Moscow, too.
If Washington continues pouring its resources, time and prestige into Ukraine’s lost cause, then the results will be as catastrophic for us as they were for Europe in 1914—and a Western victory under those conditions is not assured.
Whether Russia wins in Ukraine is not as important as what the ongoing conflict there will do both to the NATO alliance and America’s staying power in Europe. Presently, America’s days as the primary player in Europe are closing fast unless a radical policy reorientation can be affected.
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“US and NATO lack capability to supply a long war: As weapons inventories dwindle, there’s little chance the West today can build a surge hardware-making capacity”, June 24, 2022, Stephen Bryen, Asia Times, at < https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/us-and-nato-lack-capability-to-supply-a-long-war/ >
(Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company.
Dr. Bryen has 50 years of experience in government and industry. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense)
(Caption: Rosie the Riveter, symbol of the surge in production during WW2. Photo: US Department of Defense)
The long and short of it is that, while the US and NATO can fight a short conflict, neither can support a long war because there’s insufficient equipment in the now-depleted inventory and the timelines to build replacement hardware are long.
Despite a history of having done so before, starting in 1939, there is little chance that the US today can put in place a surge capacity, or that it any longer knows how to do so if it is even feasible.
Based on those circumstances alone – and there are additional, compelling reasons – the US and NATO should be thinking about how to end the war in Ukraine rather than sticking with the declared policy of trying to bleed Russia.
Let’s start by looking back at a time when the United States did know how to plan for surge weapons-building capacity.
WW2 precedent
In 1939 the Roosevelt administration, with Congressional support, passed the Protective Mobilization Act. Ultimately this would lead to the creation of a War Production Board, the Office of Production Management and the marshaling of US industry to fight the Nazis and Japanese
In 1941 the President declared an unlimited national emergency, giving the administration the power to shift industrial production to military requirements. Between 1940 and 1945, the US supplied almost two-thirds of all war supplies to the allies (including the USSR and China) and for US forces – producing some 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces (all types) and 86,000 tanks (light, medium and heavy).
Russia faced an altogether more difficult challenge because after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941 much of Russia’s defense industrial infrastructure was threatened. Russia evacuated 1,500 factories either to the Ural Mountains or to Soviet Central Asia. Even Lenin’s body was moved from Moscow to Tyumen, 2,500 km from Moscow.
Notably, Stalin Tank Factory 183 would be moved from Kharkiv, now a contested city in the Ukraine war, to the Urals, rebranded as Uralvagonzavod and situated in Nizhny Tagil. The facility had been a railroad car maker, so it was suitable for tank manufacturing. The tank factory relocation was managed by Isaac Zaltzman.
(Caption: Inside a tank factory in the Soviet Union during World War II. Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
At that factory the Soviets produced a massive number of tanks (light, medium and heavy), most notably the T-34, the world’s most successful tank design (based on the Christie tank chassis from the United States). Altogether the Soviets produced almost 78,000 tanks and self-propelled guns mounted on tank chassis.
This is now
It is noteworthy that today Russia as well as the US and America’s NATO partners all face supply problems as the war in Ukraine grinds on. While the US and Europe maintain a significant commercial industrial base, needed to supply key components for defense equipment, Russia lacks an in-depth civilian manufacturing infrastructure – especially in advanced electronics, sensors and electro-optics.
The US and Europe face a risk because they are increasingly dependent on high-tech supplies from Asia. Today there are severe supply bottlenecks, shortages and risk dependencies. Even China, which has a huge commercial manufacturing infrastructure, faces difficulties in obtaining the most sophisticated integrated circuits, manufactured only in Taiwan by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC).
Procurement of defense goods in the US and Europe is episodic, not continuous. Funds are allocated to purchase a certain quantity of defense equipment. When the contract is completed and there are no immediate follow-on purchases, production lines are shut down and second- and third-tier component suppliers also stop production – or they shift to work on other projects (and in some cases go out of business).
This means that if a new order comes in later, the supplier network and the production lines will have to be started almost from scratch. In addition to the loss of infrastructure for certain types of weapons, there is the related loss of skilled factory workers and engineers.
Giving away the stores
Admiral Sir Tony Radkin, who is chief of the UK Defense Staff, says that the “industrial capacity to backfill” has become “a significant issue” because of the rate of use of weapons in the Ukraine – where supply shortages are impacting Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting.
Speaking to the House of Lords International and Defense Committee, Radkin said, “We are then talking in years, because you cannot whistle up with modern weapons a quick production line. Yes, you can churn out shells and artillery, but even at the not super-sophisticated end, even at the modest end of an NLAW [anti-tank] weapon, then that’s going to take several years to get back to our original stocks.”
In the recent war legislation to support Ukraine, Congress appropriated an additional $9 billion to replace US war stocks, suggesting that the costs of manufacturing and inflation have almost doubled reacquisition costs. Raytheon got a new resupply contract of $634 million to restock Stinger missiles, but Raytheon pointed out it could not begin to do so before next year.
(Caption: A shipment of US-made missiles to Ukraine. Photo: WION)
In the US, big defense companies such as Raytheon and Lockheed are facing serious difficulties in resupplying the military. The US has already sent more than one-third of its war stocks of Stinger and Javelin missiles to Ukraine. As the war continues it isn’t unreasonable to think that as much as half the war stocks for these weapons will be consumed.
As the US pushes more and more weapons to Ukraine in its proxy war with Russia, important categories of military supply will be impacted.
Not counting Stingers and Javelins, the US has transferred 18 155mm howitzers with 36,000 rounds of ammunition, two Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems, thousands of night vision sets for Ukrainian troops as well as an unknown number of thermal imagers, thousands of secure radios, 700 Switchblade drones, 75,000 body armor sets with Kevlar helmets, chem-bio defense equipment and much more.
Congress recently passed and the President signed a $40 billion Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, which supplies another $14 billion for arms and humanitarian supplies for Ukraine.
2 big dangers
There are two major dangers for the US and NATO.
The first is that there is simply not enough equipment in inventory to keep up the pace of supporting Ukraine if the war lasts much longer, even with orders for new equipment in the “pipeline.”
The pipeline probably can’t keep up with demand given the long lead times to produce new weapons. If the war spreads beyond Ukraine, then NATO could be faced with a huge challenge of defending a vast territory with few weapons.
There is no sign that such equipment deficits can be overcome over the next few years, even if there is a will to do so. Some European governments have become “woke” about defense spending. But manufacturing arms in Europe is very slow, even compared with the very long lead times in the United States.
Supply bottlenecks, if they continue, will add to the problem.
The second danger is if fighting breaks out in Korea or in a Taiwan invasion. This could put an almost impossible burden on the US. There already are serious military supply shortages for US forces in Korea and Japan. Taiwan has been told the US can’t supply some weapons, including the same howitzers being supplied to Ukraine.
Wishful thinking
The current US House of Representatives version of the annual Defense Authorization Act legislation contains a provision for a critical munitions reserve and proposes establishing a pilot program to keep better tabs on subcontractors involved in production. In Washington this is what is called an “unfunded mandate” – because, without a requirement for industrial mobilization and parallel long-term funding, the House proposal is just wishful thinking.
US policymakers appear oblivious of the great risk they face in promoting a proxy war in Ukraine that could spread beyond Ukraine’s borders – impacting, for example, Eastern Europe or Germany or beyond.
Perhaps Washington policy-makers can take some comfort that Russia has wasted huge amounts of equipment and sustained the loss of over 30,000 fighting men. There is no doubt Russia’s lack of commercial industrial infrastructure and bad battle management, coupled with tenacious reinforced Ukrainian fighters, put it in a hole.
But no one knows how deep. Right now Russia is demonstrating that it has a huge store of heavy artillery and rockets, even if its mechanized armor force has been depleted.
A war that spreads could quickly consume what reserves NATO (and the US) have, and a conventional war featuring heavy artillery weapons would devastate Europe. (There is a parallel case of sorts in Korea, where North Korea has heavy artillery well dug in and close to vital urban centers in South Korea, even though North Korea is deficient in high-tech weapons other than missiles.)
One more thing
In addition, if Russia is pushed too hard, the Russian army will start demanding the right to use “tactical” nuclear weapons, which Russian politicians are already lobbying to use.
That gets to the other compelling reason to rethink the bleed-Russia policy: That policy ramps up the risk of general war to an unprecedented high level and increases the risk of the use of weapons of mass destruction.
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“U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals”, Nov. 26, 2022, Updated Nov. 29, 2022, Steven Erlanger and Lara Jakes, New York Times, at <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/world/europe/nato-weapons-shortage-ukraine.html>
The West thought an artillery and tank war in Europe would never happen again and shrank weapons stockpiles. It was wrong.
(Capt (Caption: Ukrainian forces preparing to fire an M-777 howitzer at Russian positions in the Donetsk region in May. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times)
BRUSSELS — When the Soviet Union collapsed, European nations grabbed the “peace dividend,” drastically shrinking their defense budgets, their armies and their arsenals.
With the rise of Al Qaeda nearly a decade later, terrorism became the target, requiring different military investments and lighter, more expeditionary forces. Even NATO’s long engagement in Afghanistan bore little resemblance to a land war in Europe, heavy on artillery and tanks, that nearly all defense ministries thought would never recur.
But it has.
In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.
Now, nine months into the war, the West’s fundamental unpreparedness has set off a mad scramble to supply Ukraine with what it needs while also replenishing NATO stockpiles. As both sides burn through weaponry and ammunition at a pace not seen since World War II, the competition to keep arsenals flush has become a critical front that could prove decisive to Ukraine’s effort.
The amount of artillery being used is staggering, NATO officials say. In Afghanistan, NATO forces might have fired even 300 artillery rounds a day and had no real worries about air defense. But Ukraine can fire thousands of rounds daily and remains desperate for air defense against Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones.
“A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who until recently was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment.
Image
(Caption: An apartment complex damaged in a Russian strike in May in Sloviansk, Ukraine.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times)
Last summer in the Donbas region, the Ukrainians were firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds each day, a senior NATO official said. The Russians were firing 40,000 to 50,000 rounds per day.
By comparison, the United States produces only 15,000 rounds each month.
So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells.
The West is also trying to come up with alternative systems, even if they are older, to substitute for shrinking stocks of expensive air-defense missiles and anti-tank Javelins. It is sending strong signals to Western defense industries that longer-term contracts are in the offing — and that more shifts of workers should be employed and older factory lines should be refurbished. It is trying to purchase ammunition from countries like South Korea to “backfill” stocks being sent to Ukraine.
There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.
But the obstacles are as myriad as the solutions being pursued.
NATO countries — often with great fanfare — have provided Ukraine some advanced Western artillery, which uses NATO-standard 155-mm shells. But NATO systems are rarely certified to use rounds produced by other NATO countries, which often make the shells differently. (That is a way for arms manufacturers to ensure that they can sell ammunition for their guns, the way printer manufacturers make their money on ink cartridges.)
And then there is the problem of legal export controls, which govern whether guns and ammunition sold to one country can be sent to another one at war. This is the reason the Swiss, claiming neutrality, refused Germany permission to export to Ukraine needed antiaircraft ammunition made by Switzerland and sold to Germany. Italy has a similar restriction on arms exports.
One NATO official described the mixed bag of systems that Ukraine must now cope with as “NATO’s petting zoo,” given the prevalence of animal names for weapons like the Gepard (German for cheetah) and the surface-to-air missile system called the Crotale (French for rattlesnake). So resupply is difficult, as is maintenance.
(Caption: A Gepard antiaircraft tank in the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann factory in Munich.Credit...Felix Schmitt for The New York Times)
The Russians, too, are having resupply problems of their own. They are now using fewer artillery rounds, but they have a lot of them, even if some are old and less reliable. Facing a similar scramble, Moscow is also trying to ramp up military production and is reportedly seeking to buy missiles from North Korea and more cheap drones from Iran.
Given the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in the Donbas region, NATO’s new military spending goals — 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024, with 20 percent of that on equipment instead of salaries and pensions — seem modest. But even those were largely ignored by key member countries.
In February, when the war in Ukraine began, stockpiles for many nations were only about half of what they were supposed to be, the NATO official said, and there had been little progress in creating weapons that could be used interchangeably by NATO countries.
Even within the European Union, only 18 percent of defense expenditures by nations are cooperative.
For NATO countries that have given large amounts of weapons to Ukraine, especially frontline states like Poland and the Baltics, the burden of replacing them has proved heavy.
The French, for instance, have provided some advanced weapons and created a 200-million-euro fund (about $208 million) for Ukraine to buy arms made in France. But France has already given at least 18 modern Caesar howitzers to Ukraine — about 20 percent of all of its existing artillery — and is reluctant to provide more.
The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.
In total, NATO countries have so far provided some $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine, roughly the size of France’s annual defense budget.
Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.
(Caption: D Ukrainian soldiers firing an advanced French Caesar self-propelled howitzer at a Russian target in the Donetsk region in June.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
The Ukrainians want at least four systems that the West has not provided and is unlikely to: long-range surface-to-surface missiles known as ATACMS that could hit Russia and Crimea; Western fighter jets; Western tanks; and a lot more advanced air defense, said Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist who is now a senior adviser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The ATACMS, with a range of some 190 miles, will not be given for fear they could hit Russia; the tanks and fighter jets are just too complicated, requiring a year or more to train in how to use and maintain. As for air defense, Mr. Cancian said, NATO and the United States deactivated most of their short-range air defense after the Cold War, and there is little to go around. Producing more can take up to two years.
Maintenance is key, but there are clever answers for relatively simpler equipment, like the M-777 howitzer given to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can link up to an American artillery officer in Fort Sill, Okla., and get talked through maintenance over Zoom.
Ukraine has also proved adaptable. Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army,” a reference to an old television series in which the hero is inventive and improvisational with whatever comes to hand.
To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
American officials insist that the U.S. military still has enough matériel to continue supplying Ukraine and defend U.S. interests elsewhere.
“We are committed to providing Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said this month after announcing more Stinger missiles for Ukraine.
(Caption: A Ukrainian soldier with a Stinger missile in the Donetsk region in May.Credit...Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times)
Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.
Already, some weapons are running low.
As of September, the U.S. military had a limited number of 155-mm artillery rounds in its stockpiles, and limited numbers of guided rockets, rocket launchers, howitzers, Javelins and Stingers, according to an analysis by Mr. Cancian.
The shortage in 155-mm artillery shells “is probably the big one that has the planners most concerned,” Mr. Cancian said.
“If you want to increase production capability of 155 shells,” he said, “it’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end.”
Steven Erlanger reported from Brussels and Berlin, and Lara Jakes from Brussels and Rome. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
A correction was made on, Nov. 26, 2022:
An earlier version of this article misstated what percentage was to be devoted to equipment, instead of salaries and pensions, in NATO’s new military spending goals. It is 20 percent of the total, not 60 percent.
A correction was made on, Nov. 29, 2022:
An earlier version of this article misstated the range of the missile known as ATACMS. It is up to about 190 miles, not 190 kilometers.
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Brussels. He previously reported from London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow and Bangkok. @StevenErlanger
Lara Jakes is a foreign correspondent focused on the war in Ukraine. She has been a diplomatic and military correspondent in Washington and a war correspondent in Iraq, and has reported and edited from more than 60 countries over the last 25 years. @jakesNYT
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 27, 2022, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Arming Ukraine Drains Stockpile of NATO Weapons.
The State of the War
Bakhmut: With Moscow’s forces closing in, Ukraine is barring aid workers and civilians from entering the besieged city, in what could be a prelude to a Ukrainian withdrawal.
Leopard Tanks: Kyiv’s troops are getting a crash course in using the German-made tanks, less than three weeks after Berlin agreed to let them go to Ukraine.
Prisoners of War: Poorly trained Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine describe being used as cannon fodder by commanders throwing waves of bodies into an assault.
Russian Aerial Barrage: Ukrainian utility crews were working to repair new and significant damage to the country’s energy grid, officials said, after Russia unleashed a major wave of missiles and attack drones.
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