By Noah Rothman
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
In the hours that followed U.S. airstrikes on Iranian
nuclear targets, the president’s critics devoted themselves to arguing that the
attacks had been a tactical failure. Of course, they limited themselves to
arguing tactics — whether the strikes could have been marginally more effective
given the right intelligence, targeting information, ordnance — because
claiming that the operation was a strategic failure would have been a
hard sell.
The joint U.S.-Israeli mission cemented America’s
relationship with Jerusalem, which has emerged from the wars imposed on it
after the 10/7 massacre as the dominant military power in the region. The
strikes confirmed that the United States is still willing to defend its
interests by imposing costs on bad actors, state and non-state alike, that they
cannot easily absorb. They confirmed that America’s tolerance for the
diplomatic process has limits and that it will not quietly endure challenges to
the geopolitical status quo forever.
With the news that the United States is cutting Ukraine off from access to
American ordnance, the Trump administration risks sabotaging the message its
Iran strikes conveyed.
“The decision was driven by the Pentagon’s policy chief,
Elbridge Colby,” Politico revealed. Colby, the undersecretary of defense
for policy and a longtime skeptic of America’s support for Ukraine’s cause,
abruptly halted already scheduled shipments of munitions, including PAC-3
Patriot interceptors, AIM-7 and Hellfire Missiles, guided multiple-launch
rocket systems, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and 155 millimeter artillery
rounds.
As Politico conceded, the decision “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, according to three people familiar with the issue.”
America’s enemies should not, however, mistake this
unmistakable signal of weakness for weakness. Take it from the White House:
“This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review
of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the
globe,” an overcompensating statement from White House Deputy Press Secretary
Anna Kelly read. “The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains
unquestioned — just ask Iran.”
Deterrence may be restored to the Middle East — at least,
for now. But it is not restored to Europe, where Russian missile and drone
attacks on Ukraine’s cities have grown in intensity
and savagery in recent weeks. Of course, Russia and China are taking their
cues from all of America’s actions. When it comes to Ukraine, the
signals Washington is sending to our adversaries are contradictory.
Ukraine has done everything the Trump administration
asked of it. It signed the onerous mineral rights deal with the Trump team. It dutifully
participated in the peace process to which Trump seemed wedded, even when the
Russian side did not. It supported Trump’s modest efforts to pressure
Moscow into making concessions. That initiative culminated in Trump giving
Russia just two weeks to come to the table in good faith — a deadline that
expired three weeks ago. Indeed, Colby’s maneuver directly
undermines remarks the president
delivered at last week’s NATO summit, in which he castigated Vladimir Putin
and seemed open to providing Ukraine with anti-missile interceptors.
It’s not clear right now if Trump was even read in on
Colby’s initiative. If he was, the president was persuaded by the suggestion
that America had reached the limits of its material capacity to defend its
interests abroad and needed to make some tough decisions.
No one should dismiss the scale of the challenges before
America’s defense industrial base as the global threat environment deteriorates
and more of its frontline partners find themselves enmeshed in conflict with
our mutual enemies. As the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan ably detailed, the U.S. is burning through air
defense munitions “at an alarming rate,” and those arms will be necessary to
deter Chinese aggression.
Granted. But if we’re evaluating Ukraine’s cause purely
as a proxy theater in which we can pantomime messages meant for Beijing — a
narrow outlook is contemptuous of our core security interests in Europe — let’s
think about it from China’s perspective.
Forget for now that some of the munitions to which
Ukraine won’t have access (the Vietnam-era AIM-7 air-to-air missile, for
example, is not going to make or break America’s deterrent posture) have little
to do with deterring the Chinese. Is the People’s Republic somehow going to
rethink its desire for adventurism in the South China Sea because America is
cutting off its frontline partners abroad? Will Beijing think twice about
attacking Taiwan only because America has theoretically redoubled its commitment
to the defense of Guam? Or does that posture convey Washington’s indecision,
insecurity, and impatience with its beleaguered foreign partners?
America’s capacity to build and export the best-class
weapons on earth is unrivaled, but it is also strained. These are not insurmountable challenges, though, as the “restrainers” so often imply. Critics of America’s
obligations to Ukraine maintain that they are — that America is an all but
spent force that must narrow its commitments to Ukraine in ways that just
happen to coincide with their
policy prescriptions from the outset of Putin’s war and long before
America’s ordnance stockpiles started looking rather thin.
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.
“Air defense won’t win a war for you,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, “but the absence of it will lose one
fast.” Giving up on Ukraine is what Trump’s brain trust in the Pentagon has
long sought, but it’s not clear that their goal is also Trump’s.
His administration will pay a reputational price for letting Ukraine burn. It
will not lead the news, but Ukraine’s torturous exsanguination will become
background radiation that Americans will slowly, bitterly absorb. They’ll catch
glimpses now and then of the horrors their leaders tacitly sanction, and
they’ll resent seeing America once again abandon its friends for fear of its
enemies. And when Trump is gone, he will bequeath to his successor a more
dangerous Europe that demands an even greater commitment of American resources
as it and its allies scramble to contain the land-hungry despot in the Kremlin.
These are not desirable outcomes. The president should
avoid them. And for a time, it seemed like he was so inclined. If that was ever
the case, the Pentagon didn’t get the memo.
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