US halts weapons shipments to Ukraine over fears stockpiles are too low
US halts weapons shipments to Ukraine over fears stockpiles are too low
US halts weapons shipments to Ukraine over fears its stockpiles are too low
The Pentagon has halted shipments of critical US Patriot air defence systems and other precision weapons to Ukraine after concern that US stockpiles are running too low, prompting alarm in Kyiv.
At the end of last week’s Nato summit, Donald Trump hinted that supplies of Patriot missile interceptors were running down because some had been supplied to Israel, though he suggested he would like to help Kyiv.
After a meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the US president acknowledged that Ukraine did “want to have the anti-missile systems, as they call the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available”.
But Trump added: “They’re very hard to get. We need them. We were supplying them to Israel,” implying that supporting Israel in its war with Iran – a priority for the Republican administration – had set back its willingness to help Kyiv.
Naturally people will blame Trump because he doesn't really care about Ukraine, but this was inevitable when Israel started sucking up all of the USs military aid. Without a massive increase in industrial capacity to build even more weapons, eventually, the stockpiles were always going to run low.
What all this illustrates is that the US lacks industrial capacity for maintaining its hegemony. They've run through their existing stocks over the past three years, and they're unable to manufacture weapons at the rate they're being consumed. As a result, they have to make hard choices regarding which proxies have more value to them.
We blame Trump because it wasn't inevitable. He lied to Americans about Gaza. He tore up the nuclear agreement with Iran. A lack of weapons is entirely Trump's fault.
"Biden I'm working constantly trying to get Israel to do a ceasefire" Constantly sends them weapons
Israel: "Joe Biden has never said the word ceasefire to us".
Liberals: "Trump is so unique for lying to us about Israel! It's totally not just a reflection of the systems flaws itself!"
Lying to Americans about Gaza has been the bipartisan policy our entire lives lol
... although, yeah, him tearing up the nuclear deal in his first term and his Arab-Israeli normalization plan to unite Israel and the Gulf states against Iran actually might have set us on this course. The nuclear deal could have potentially brought Iran in-line with US interests in the region, and he blew that up. Normalization, meanwhile, was basically the reason for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood which started this phase of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians (to be clear, the genocide was ongoing before Oct 7th).
In the counter-factual, where Hilary won and the nuclear deal was maintained and Iran was brought in with the rest of the Gulf states in alliance against China, Israel probably would have been able to carry out its ethnic cleansing of Palestine without a war. Instead, thanks to Trump, Israel is going to destroy itself trying to wage war on all of its neighbors and will be broken against the Axis of Resistance.
If you truly believe our stockpiles are low, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
Why wouldn't they be low after supplying Ukraine and now Israel for so long? They're finite, as is our capacity to replenish them. There's been plenty of reporting on the limits of our ability to do so.
Skepticism is warranted, but it could easily be true.