The Decline Of American Manufacturing Inevitably Means An Empty Wartime Arsenal

It is hard to be the arsenal of democracy if you can’t make anything anymore. The war in Ukraine has deranged many people — Michael Rubin, a lunatic and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wants to give Ukraine nukes — but it may also teach us some hard but necessary lessons. For instance, as the tides of war turn against Ukraine, it seems that globalist economics is defeating globalist foreign policy interventionism.

Ukraine’s much-hyped summer offensive has been disappointing. Or as The New York Times delicately informed its readers in a report on a minor Ukrainian victory, the assault is, “moving at a slower pace than expected” and has shown that “Kyiv’s and the Western allies’ hopes for a quick victory were unrealistic … every mile of their drive into Russian-occupied territory would be grueling and contested.”

The war has become one of attrition, and regardless of our sympathies, this favors Russia. Foreign policy realist John Mearsheimer recently observed, “The Russians have had the upper hand this year, mainly because they have a substantial advantage in artillery, which is the most important weapon in attrition warfare.” For all of the billions in aid the West has sent to the Ukrainians, they are still short of munitions; they don’t need F-16s and precision weapons nearly as much as they need a mountain of old-fashioned shells.

There has been a steady stream of stories warning that Ukraine’s forces are low on munitions and outgunned by their Russian enemies. Russia’s rate of fire is perhaps 10 times that of Ukraine. Worse still, the United States and its allies are depleting their own supplies, as well as struggling to provide weapons to other clients such as Taiwan. Though there is some overlap between the weapons systems that Ukraine and Taiwan each need,

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