And Washington is still, despite occasional appearances to the contrary, the most important member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so it should be ready to deter Russia – which is already waging hybrid war against European NATO countries – from entering the Baltics, say. Even short of that kind of escalation, the American missile crunch is hurting Ukraine, which was hoping to buy more American weapons with European money to defend itself against Moscow’s constant bombardment. Now there simply won’t be many, or any, left over.
I’m not suggesting that Beijing, Pyongyang or Moscow will look at America’s missile shortages in isolation and give the order to open new fronts in what would then threaten to become a world war.
But it cannot have escaped their attention that the US, which a French foreign minister once called a “hyperpower”, now looks much diminished militarily: almost out of breath and out of ammo.
Trump, as is his wont, is trying to dismiss reports of his frustration at Hegseth and the munitions crisis as fake news, claiming that “everything has been extraordinary”. The reality, as Kori Schake, a veteran of the National Security Council in an earlier Republican administration, puts it, is that “far from discovering a new way of war, Trump has merely discovered new ways to lose”.
Ammunition stocks are one metric of a catastrophe whose scale is only gradually becoming clear. Trump can have at it against Hegseth and his other minions all he wants. What he should, but won’t, admit is that he has wrought a global disaster.
