The Pentagon has announced that it has again undervalued ammunition, missiles and other military equipment provided to Ukraine, opening the door to supplying $2 billion in new military support for Kyiv.
This brings total aid tied to such re-valuations of systems provided from U.S. stocks to $8.2 billion, a considerable sum in light of the current political bottleneck in Congress over providing new assistance to Ukraine.
The latest revision in the estimated value of U.S. equipment comes at a critical time for the Ukrainian government, as the continuation of large-scale deliveries of U.S. weaponry is in doubt not only due to divisions in Congress but due to the possibility of an aid cutoff should Donald Trump win this fall’s presidential election.
In the meantime, the Government Accountability Office has argued that there needs to be a clarification of how weapons provided from U.S. stocks should be valued, a move that would preclude the kind of accounting shuffle that has once again opened the way to additional billions in aid to Ukraine.
It’s hard to begrudge Ukraine additional assistance in its effort to defend against further Russian territorial gains, but arms alone, on whatever scale, will not be enough to resolve the conflict in a way that allows that nation to rebuild itself from the devastation caused by the Russian invasion. Nor will it enable Ukraine to construct an economically viable democracy. The best hope for salvaging such an outcome is a diplomatic initiative, as challenging as that may be.
Ultimately, the Pentagon’s statistical maneuvering to free up funding for Ukraine is likely to have a limited impact on the outcome of the war. It is important that Kyiv get the support it needs to defend itself. But the notion that Ukraine can win a decisive military victory, if only there were a steadier flow of weapons aid, is dangerously misguided.
It will take more than a little budgetary sleight-of-hand to set the stage for a settlement of the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine. It’s long past time to abandon the approach of providing weapons to Ukraine and hoping for the best, as a number of key U.S. officials are coming to recognize.
They now believe that the purpose of military aid should be to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in negotiations to end the war, not to subsidize “total victory” on the battlefield. In this context, a one-time tranche of $2 billion in military aid, while useful in the short-term, will ultimately have a modest impact on the outcome of the conflict. The Pentagon and the administration need to focus on the big picture — how to end the conflict in Ukraine — rather than cooking the books to provide a one-time infusion of military support.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.
The Biden administration says it is giving Israel 30 days to address concerns related to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In a letter to two senior Israeli officials dated Oct. 13, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, “We are now writing to underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.”
But critics are panning the letter, calling it a political gambit that’s too little and too late.
“I don’t know whether I'm terribly naive, I still have the capacity to be shocked, but the degree of cynicism required to set a 30 day limit … which coincidentally, gets you past the election date,” said Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project. Levy spoke about the letter Tuesday during a panel discussion on Israel’s war in Gaza hosted by the Quincy Institute.
The letter warns that a “failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications (arms embargo) for U.S. policy under NSM-20 and relevant U.S. law.” The problem with this is that “the Biden administration hasn’t done this (ultimatums) throughout” the last year when it could have, according to Levy.
Others wondered, given atrocities are playing out in real time, whether the Biden administration would act on its ultimatum.
“The U.S. giving Israel 30 days to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza or face cuts in weapon shipments is the most dishonest and morally bankrupt announcement I've seen for a long time,” said former UK diplomat Ian Proud on X. “Surely U.S. voters aren't so stupid they won't spot a big can of worms kicked down the street until after the elections?”
Blinken and Austin say that a minimum of 350 aid trucks per day need to enter Gaza through the four major crossings, as well as a fifth crossing that must be opened. Additionally, they want to ensure that Israel is not preventing essential items from entering Gaza by listing them as “dual use.”
They also insist “that there will be no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza.”
Dr. Annelle Sheline, Middle East fellow at the Quincy Institute, said that the letter appears to be a “clear acknowledgement” that the Biden administration knows that Israel is flouting laws governing U.S. military assistance.
keep readingShow less
Top image credit: Prashantrajsingh / Shutterstock.com
“Isolationism” is back in vogue in American political discourse. Not as a policy (by some measures, the United States has been at war for 93% of its history, with no sign of stopping), but as a term of abuse.
From Kamala Harris to Condoleezza Rice, accusations of isolationism are once again weaponized to discredit calls for a more restrained foreign policy. Yet it is not the so-called isolationists who threaten the United States with isolation on the world stage. Paradoxically, it is the self-appointed anti-isolationists, rather than those calling for a reconsideration of America’s role in the world, who have left America more isolated than ever.
This is not the isolation of a country that turns inwards and to its own problems. It is the isolation that comes when the global majority perceives you as — let’s not mince words — a militaristic country that eschews diplomacy and is beset by its own problems with democracy and human rights.
One need not agree with this assessment. But Americans need to understand just how widespread such opinions have become outside the U.S., and increasingly also within it. We need to understand just how isolated America has become after decades of “anti-isolationist” leadership. American leaders have bombed more than 30 countries since 1946, and have conducted near constant regime change operations in the same period (the Washington Post has the number at 72 times between 1945 to 1991). We have conducted overseas military interventions 251 times between 1991 and 2022, according to the Congressional Research Service. When we include the British Empire, there are few countries that have not suffered, at one time or another, at the hands of Anglo-Saxons. One can therefore forgive much of the “Global South,” most of which is comprised of former Western colonies, for seeing America’s chief export as terror, exploitation, and destruction.
These views predated October 7th and the subsequent assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 42,000 and wounded nearly 100,000, the vast majority civilians. After a year of constant bombing, rampant disease, and famine, the true toll is almost certainly many multiples of the official numbers.
U.S.-Israeli narratives regarding the necessity of continuing what many consider a genocide fall flat across the formerly colonized world, and increasingly also in America, where President Biden’s Middle East policy has alienated a generation of voters. With actions that even ex-CIA directors call terrorism now barreling down upon Lebanon and potentially Iran, and with storms of American-made, multi-ton bombs raining down upon civilian infrastructure in southern Beirut, global perceptions of the U.S. are on a glide path from horror to rage making it, well, extremely isolated.
Washington and much of the media continue to insist that America maintains unshakable alliances with the richest and most powerful countries in the world. In reality, these alliances now consist of a handful of states, almost all former colonial powers, which make up a fraction of the global population and whose demographics, militaries, and economies have been declining for years. Add to this the wave of anti-“globalist” sentiment across Europe and North America, and NATO’s much vaunted unity could collapse under ballots rather than bombs. Should the much ballyhooed “Article 5” be invoked against Russia or China, you can bet that many NATO members — Turkey and Hungary for certain, but many others if the far-left and far-right continue to gain electoral ground in Europe — would not heed the call. Such an abandonment would open the door for further defections from an alliance whose most recent accomplishment, in the minds of a growing number of Europeans, has been the economic devastation wrought by electively closing the continent to the cheap Russian energy.
Americans might worry when their country’s standing in the eyes of the world is in free fall. We might worry when our most consistent allies at the United Nations are tiny states whose economies would collapse without U.S. largesse, when our closest counterparts cannot stand with us on critical policy decisions, and when a number of our most important client states (Jordan and Egypt, for example) are hemorrhagingpopular support as a consequence of (in the eyes of many ordinary Egyptians and Jordanians) their autocratic leaders’ vassal-like obedience to Washington’s war aims.
Even the initial global support for our policy in Ukraine has weakened, with much of the Global South (and an increasing number of Americans and Europeans) viewing the war, however unfounded, as provoked by Washington and waged for the sake of gaining control of Ukraine’s trillions in natural resources. Even if we vehemently disagree with such assessments, we cannot close our eyes to them.
America remains powerful. But it is not powerful enough to go it alone. As we lurch closer to WWIII, the real question for U.S. foreign policy is not between “isolationism” or “internationalism," it is between continuing on a path that has left us increasingly isolated on the world stage, or taking up the difficult task of recalibrating what American leadership means at a global scale. If such a recalibration is foreclosed, if anti-war — or simply pro-prudence — voices continue to be ridiculed, vilified, and silenced, then isolationism will indeed be our undoing. Just not in the way that the anti-isolationists expect.
keep readingShow less
Top photo credit: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials visit the Terminal Altitude Area Defense System site in IsraelU.S. Air Force (photo by Staff Sgt. Cory D. Payne)
The escalation of conflict in the Middle East will now apparently involve U.S. troops. President Biden has directed the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to Israel, along with around 100 American soldiers needed to operate it. This is the first time that U.S. troops will have been sent to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault.
This risk of further American involvement comes as the American public is increasingly against sending troops to fight Israel’s war. A survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs released in August found that only about four in ten Americans supported sending troops to defend Israel if it were attacked by its neighbors, down from around 55% until 2021. This decision to deploy to Israel so close to the November election is made as general sympathies for Israel have slipped to a low of 33% amongst Americans polled in Sept. 2024.
After Israel assassinated several Hamas, Iranian, and Hezbollah officials, Iran retaliated with a missile barrage that was restricted largely to military targets and caused minor damage and no Israeli deaths. Following Iran’s assault, Israeli officials have been explicit in their intent to continue the cycle of violence. “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
Israel has reportedly been planning its retaliation to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, some experts believe that the THAAD defense system is an indication that this response may be imminent, and severe. Middle East expert Aaron David Miller says that Israel’s next assault will likely be “so comprehensive that the Iranians will have to respond.”
Military expert at Defense Priorities, Daniel Davis, says placing American troops in harm's way carries significant risk. “Naturally, if Americans are killed in the execution of their duties, there will be howls from the pro-war hawks in the West ‘demanding’ the president ‘protect our troops’ by firing back on Iran,” he said, adding,“if he wants to protect our service members, then don't put them into someone else's war. This is exactly the sort of thing that gets nations sucked into war they have no interest in fighting.”
The United States deployed missile defense systems to Israel during the 1991 Gulf War when Israel was facing threats from Iraqi mobile Scud launchers. But Americans were already fighting Iraqi troops in the region, thus not contributing to regional escalation or making Americans more vulnerable than they already were. The Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein also notes that the U.S. deployed THAAD systems to Iraqi Kurdistan where U.S. personnel face risks, but, he added, Washington sending them to Israel now “makes U.S. troops part of Israel’s conflict with Iran.”.
“The Biden administration keeps saying that they want to prevent a wider war, and yet every time they send Israel more money and weapons and now American soldiers, they are causing the violence to spread,” said Quincy Institute Middle East Research Fellow Dr. Annelle Sheline. “They must be aware of this, and therefore they are lying when they say they don't want a regional war.”
Weinstein says that with U.S. troops in the region targeted by Iranian-aligned militias and Houthi fighters off of the Yemeni coast, further entangling America in Israel’s regional conflict with Iran needs to be further scrutinized. “While we don’t know what’s been agreed upon behind closed doors, events over the past year give plenty of reason to doubt that Israel will consider U.S. interests in exchange for its support," he said.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.