Substacks

America Can’t Intervene Everywhere. Where Should It? Isaac Grafstein

Published

9 months ago

October 27, 2023

A Javelin missile fired by soldiers with the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team heads toward a target during a live-fire training exercise. The U.S. military has sent almost a third of its javelin missile supply to Ukraine. (Michael Ciaglo via Getty Images)

This time last year, Russia-Ukraine was the hot war du jour, and officials were hectoring the Israelis for the crime of not shipping weapons to Kyiv.

Congressman Michael Turner, of the House Intelligence and House Armed Services committees, lectured: “This is the time for all democracies and all individual countries that have a moral compass to stand together against this type of brutality.”

And Ukraine’s embassy in Israel blasted Jerusalem in a statement this summer: “We urge Israel government to change its position and to support Ukraine with defensive means, to support freedom and democratic world order. We expect Israel to be on the right side of history!”

Now that Hamas has brutally attacked Israel, murdering, raping, and taking hostage thousands of innocent civilians—and as Hezbollah launches missiles into Northern Israel from Lebanon and Syria fires rockets into the Golan Heights—it is abundantly clear that the Jewish state is in for a long and difficult war. What’s even clearer: Israel’s decision to save its arms has proven prescient.

This strategic foresight stands in stark contrast to the United States, which severely depleted its munitions stores that were stationed in Israel earlier this year. These weapons could have been used to advance American interests in the Middle East, but were instead diverted to Ukraine.

These two approaches—one of pragmatic restraint and the other of reflexive power projection—bring into stark relief a long-standing battle of ideas about the right way to design a national security strategy. Today, as the U.S. promises to support both Israel and Ukraine in hot wars, that debate is not theoretical, but practical and urgent.

President Joe Biden addresses the nation to discuss the U.S. response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday October 19, 2023.

The conventional wisdom in Washington—embraced by policymakers across the political spectrum—was well-summarized by Joe Biden late last week in an address to the nation pleading for $100 billion in additional military aid to go to both Ukraine and Israel.

“We know that our allies, and maybe most importantly our adversaries and competitors, are watching,” he said. “If we walk away and let Putin erase Ukraine’s independence, would-be aggressors around the world would be emboldened to try the same. The risk of conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world, in the Indo-Pacific and especially the Middle East.”

This view of deterrence—that any sign of weakness in one region signals a broader weakness to our adversaries around the world—is shared by many prominent Republicans. Days before Hamas launched its barbaric attack, onstage at the second GOP primary debate Nikki Haley chastised her primary opponent Vivek Ramaswamy for advocating for a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine. “A win for Russia is a win for China,” she said. Mike Pence chimed in too: “Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan! Peace comes through strength!”

In the days after the attack, they doubled down. Haley wrote in the New York Post: “Biden’s weakness on Moscow and Tehran has strengthened Beijing—which is hosting Putin as I write—and endangered America. America is strong enough to hold China, Russia, and Iran accountable at the same time.”

This view—that the United States is strong and capable enough to do everything, everywhere, all at once—has been the consensus in Washington since 9/11. With rare exception, that view goes like this: the United States must be the world’s policeman. We can—and must—fight on multiple fronts in order to keep the global balance of power from tilting to our adversaries. And, most significantly, there are seemingly no limitations on our ability to do so. (Israel, which is surrounded by adversaries and under constant threat, has a profound awareness of limitations when it comes to defense.)

But the dam in Washington is beginning to break.

A growing number of policymakers and analysts believe that, despite the muscular rhetoric from the White House, the reality is far graver. With a gutted industrial base, a weak president, and a rival in China unlike any we have seen since World War II, America’s power is scarce. Conserving our physical, material capabilities, they argue, is what matters for deterrence. Not some abstract idea of credibility.

For evidence of this shift, look no further than a bill introduced to the Senate on Thursday by Senator Roger Marshall, co-sponsored by Senators J.D. Vance, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz. The bill comes after a memo circulated in the Senate earlier this week by Vance, called “Differentiating Ukraine and Israel.” In it, he objects to the Biden administration’s effort to connect funding for both countries, arguing that their respective war efforts are fundamentally different. Helping to secure the Gaza Strip, Vance writes, is more achievable and more important for American interests than helping to recover Ukrainian territory, which would require decades of sustained conflict at the current pace.

Senator J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, is seen in the U.S. Capitol after a vote on Thursday, May 11, 2023. (Tom Williams via Getty Images)

The bill, whose arguments have been echoed by Senators Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, and others in recent days, reflects the fundamental divide between the old, abundance-driven mindset and the emerging call for strategic prioritization.

“I think that a lot of them grew up in an era when America was the dominant power. They’re thinking about the world in 1990s or 2000s terms, where it’s America, nobody else, and we’re the global hegemon. And I think for a lot of them, it is psychologically hard to wake up in a world that actually exists in 2023, where our constraints are very real,” Vance told me.

Partly those constraints are the result of decisions that they made over the past decades, Vance argued. “It requires them to look in the mirror and acknowledge that they allowed the world superpower to become an economy that can’t even manufacture enough artillery shells. That’s very hard to recognize. It’s very hard to look in the mirror and say America is constrained in part because I made mistakes. It’s much easier to pretend that those constraints don’t exist and hope that reality never hits you in the face.”

So what are those constraints?

The main one is the deterioration of our defense industrial base, which Deputy Defense Secretary William Perry first warned about in 1993 when he informed the defense establishment at a Pentagon dinner that they were facing an era of massive consolidation. Since then, reduced manufacturing capabilities and supply chain issues have diminished our ability to build key weapons systems. The number of suppliers of solid rocket motors, for example, has plummeted in the last few decades.

According to Raytheon, it will take several years to resupply the Stingers, Javelins, and other precision missiles that have been sent to Ukraine in the last year. Right now, Taiwan has about $19 billion in equipment orders that will likely remain backlogged for years. Already, the United States is rapidly diverting 155-millimeter artillery shells that were originally intended for Ukraine to Israel due to the drawdown on U.S stockpiles.

Ground personnel unload weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and other military hardware delivered at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv on January 25, 2022. (Sean Gallup via Getty Images)

Vance emphasized to me that it’s not billions of dollars that Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan need—it’s weapons. And you can throw money at the problem, but unless you actually rebuild the capacity to supply multiple countries, you’re not going to be able to do much with that money.

“Even if you pressed a button tomorrow, making Congress functional, making Joe Biden effective, and increasing our defense industrial capacity, it would still take years to get to a point where we can effectively supply both Taiwan and Ukraine,” he said.

Why can’t we rapidly ramp up production? “We are literally talking about rocket science,” a national security expert on Capitol Hill told me. “These are exquisite, precision-engineered systems produced by highly skilled technicians. You can’t just repurpose a pencil factory.”

The decrease in our stock of munitions is alarming because it compromises America’s ability to protect our core interests. For years, protecting Taiwan from a Chinese invasion has been of paramount concern. The island nation is of devastating importance to the United States as a critical supplier of the microchips we depend on and as a bulwark against our main economic rival’s hegemony in Asia. Imagine a scenario in which China invades Taiwan and we have completely used up Patriot missiles, HIMARS, and artillery shells, leaving us unable to help defend the island. Say goodbye to American economic growth—to everything from modern home appliances to smartphones—to say nothing of national security.

Taiwanese soldiers take part in a demonstration showing their combat skills during a visit by Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at a military base in Chiayi on January 6, 2023. (Sam Yeh via Getty Images)

Figures like Biden, Haley, and Pence insist that supporting Ukraine is critical to deter the Chinese from invading Taiwan. But the U.S. has provided $113 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the war broke out in February 2022, and there is no indication that Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan have shifted—that “peace through strength” has worked.

Instead, the People’s Liberation Army is continuing its aggressive activities in the Taiwan Strait. Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, acknowledged this recently. One Republican senator’s national security adviser told me: “The PRC is developing a network of bases, which they had never done before, overseas in the Middle East and the Atlantic coast of Africa. They’re practicing amphibious invasions. They’re practicing airborne assaults. They are rapidly developing a nuclear arsenal to rival our own. These are very clear indications of China’s intentions.”

Some point out that all of these fights are interconnected, noting that China and Iran, for example, have been critical sources of support to Russia throughout its campaign in Ukraine. And in Israel, Hamas fighters were trained by Iran and reportedly used North Korean weaponry.

All true. Of course our enemies forge alliances with one another—they all want to displace America as the world superpower. In order not to let them do so, it is crucial that we allocate resources, public support, and focus where they matter most. Getting embroiled in too many conflicts that do not directly impact our interests only helps this alliance of enemies. Not all regions hold the same strategic importance for the United States.

While the slogan “our adversaries are watching” is certainly accurate, some in Washington contend that our enemies are not watching to gauge some abstract idea of American resolve. Elbridge Colby, a deputy assistant secretary of defense under Trump, told me that in reality, when planning an invasion of Taiwan, China is looking at the military balance in the region. And when it comes to actual ships and forces around Taiwan, the PRC greatly outnumbers the USA. This is a dangerous state of affairs.

In the wake of Hamas’s attack, the hawks are finding their voices once again. They believe America can show no weakness. But exhibiting restraint does not necessarily signal weakness. It can also signal strategy.

In this precarious moment, let us learn from Israel, take stock of our limitations, remember that decisions about our defense capabilities are zero-sum, and remain clear-eyed about our core interests.

Isaac Grafstein is a writer and chief of staff at The Free Press.

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Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

7 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

14 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

17 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641