Adequate Reserves.

20,000,000,000,000,000 ants.

1. Hal Brands:

The Ukraine war isn’t a fight between two great powers, but it is a case study in how hard it can be simply to keep fighting in high-intensity conflict: A free-world coalition led by a global superpower has struggled to meet the Kyiv government’s needs without dangerously depleting its own stockpiles.

The US reportedly provided one-third of its overall stockpile of Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine in the first, most desperate weeks of the fighting. It may take years for Washington and other countries to replenish their armories.

Ukraine, surely aided by US intelligence, has shown an uncanny ability to put High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and the rockets they fire to devastatingly good use. Yet Kyiv’s requests are increasingly in tension with Washington’s need to assure it has adequate reserves of weapons that figure centrally in its own war plans.

To be sure, there is no better use right now for these weapons than giving them to a fragile democracy that is inflicting an epic beating on a brutal tyranny. The current war, though, is also a flashing red warning sign about how hard it would be to keep US forces supplied if they had to fight a conflict against China. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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