The West Again Learns That War Needs Industry
Behind the deadly front lines where Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are locked in combat, a less-noticed life-or-death battle is raging to keep troops supplied with arms and ammunition. The side that loses that fight is the one that will lose the war. It is a lesson Washington is relearning.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed huge shortfalls in Western defense-industry capacity and organization. The U.S. and its allies aren’t prepared to fight a protracted war in the Pacific, and would struggle with a long European conflict.
As Adm. Rob Bauer, a top military officer at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, puts it: “Every war, after about five or six days, becomes about logistics." If the U.S. clashed head-on with Russia or China, stocks of precision weaponry could be used up in hours or days.
Other vital supplies would run out soon after. Many governments are starting to respond. The U.S.
is increasing arms production after decades of focus on terrorism and homeland security. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged a “war economy" to boost military supplies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has shed Berlin’s longstanding disdain for military spending.
It is a pivot with echoes of the last century, when the U.S. repeatedly swung its economy to fight wars and face down enemies. Woodrow Wilson nationalized America’s railroads in 1917, and in 1942 Detroit lurched from making cars to churning out tanks and bombers.
The Cold War spawned the military-industrial complex. Nobody’s ready to test those extremes today. To handle newly aggressive adversaries without commandeering industries or exploding national budgets, Washington and its allies will need to try fresh approaches to developing, buying and maintaining
. Read more on livemint.com
