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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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You are right the west is slowing down on armaments which they should not be doing. They should be increasing them.

The west is slowing arms shipments because it’s running low on them and America has a completely dysfunctional government that can’t make more. Not because it doesn’t want to.

It's hardly just America: the EU has fallen pretty far short of its promised artillery ammunition production, with what seems to be lots of finger pointing at whom should be footing the bills for expanding factories that may be shuttered as soon as the war ends.

As best as I can tell, American contributions are being limited by (1) a mismatch in kind of materiel: a war involving the US depends a lot more on air power dropping bombs and cruise missiles than millions of unguided artillery shells (ironically, both Koreas are equipped for this and have been quietly supplying their sides); (2) an unwillingness to share more advanced technology for fear of losing the advantage of its novelty: we're not giving stealth aircraft or tanks with classified armor because we'd prefer the exact performance be a surprise when we need it; and (3) because we want other parties, notably Western Europe, to increase their defense investments rather than expect Team America, World Police to show up every time they ask.

I think it's fair to add (4) that domestic American politics has reached a point where Ukraine support is no longer unconditional on the part of the opposition party, but subject to negotiations that are politically painful for the current government to concede and (5) that there are some categories of support that the US could draw from WW3 stockpiles, but refuses to (such as re-mobilization of much of the mothball-ground vehicle storage yards)

Of these, however, the most relevant are (1) (war material mismatch, particularly artillery), which is expected to start reversing in late 24/25, and (3) coalition considerations. One of the under-recognized aspects of the Biden Ukraine-supporting-coalition approach has been how much of it has been centered around involving the Europeans, as opposed to a 'fast but American-alone' approach that risked being both insufficient for the time and also giving the Europeans political pretexts to not get on board with the Ukraine support in earnest.' A particular example was the German tank issue- as frustrating as it was, if the US had delivered 'escalatory' western-armor out of the gate, there was a real and non-trivial chance the Germans would have refused to approve Lepord deliveries from anyone.

Some of that is Republican blocking arms. Though I do think we have a lot of arms we could bring to the fight that are abandoned still. We have a lot of tanks, AFV, old F-18 etc that are being abandoned. Some things like artillery we do seem low on.