Arms makers cash in as nations gird for wider war in Israel, Ukraine and the South China Sea
(Originally published Oct. 18 in “What in the World“) Concerns of a wider war around Israel continue to grow after a blast at a Gaza City hospital killed hundreds on the eve of U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit and as tensions mount between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
While Israel said Islamic Jihad was responsible for the hospital blast, Hamas has blamed an Israeli air strike. Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza following Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel Oct. 7, which killed 1,400 people and took 200 captives, have killed almost 3,000 people.
That has sparked calls for further retribution against Israel and the United States. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Monday that Iranian-backed militias in the region might attack if Israel continued to assault Gaza. “If the war crimes against the Palestinians are not immediately stopped,” he said, “other multiple fronts will open and this is inevitable.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has, meanwhile, jetted off to Beijing to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping and attend the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation being held Tuesday and Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of China’s version of Japan’s long-controversial official development assistance. You remember ODA: loans are extended to poor countries to hire Japanese (now Chinese) contractors to build big-ticket infrastructure, helping expand Japanese (now Chinese) influence, open new export markets, secure raw material imports, while also diversifying Japanese (now Chinese) bank balance sheets and providing contractors valuable foreign-currency income when local property markets are slumping, but saddling those foreign countries with massive debts.
Ukraine has, meanwhile, begun using long-range U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms (presumably pronounced, appropriately, as “Attack ‘ems”), against Russian logistics lines as Moscow presses a new fall offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province. After long refusing to provide Kyiv with the long-range weapons, Biden relented in late September after U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to send long-range missiles to Ukraine.
When Britain began shipping long-range missiles to Ukraine and Russia failed to escalate, national security adviser Jake Sullivan was able to overcome objections from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that Atacms were too expensive and stockpiles too low to send them to Ukraine, which would likely expend them as quickly as it has blown through its artillery and air-defense missiles. Sullivan, who had decided to give Ukraine F-16s six months before Biden announced his decision to do so, had decided to provide Ukraine with Atacms two months after the F-16 announcement, in July.
The U.S. slipped the Atacms into Ukraine in the past few days. That leaves only attack drones on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s shopping list of U.S. weapons that Biden won’t give it and follows a long and carefully stage-managed escalation that has seen Biden refuse, then yield, on giving Ukraine a range of weapons once considered likely to provoke Russia into widening the war. But as Russia and Ukraine both run low on ammunition and Russia consolidates its land bridge to Crimea, Biden’s reluctance has been steadily dismantled, first with Stingers, then howitzers, Himars rocket launchers, Patriot missiles, Abrams battle tanks and in May F-16s.
The wars in Ukraine and Israel are already driving up orders for new military equipment so fast that arms contractors are struggling to meet demand. Both sides are so short of artillery that they’ve begun importing more howitzer shells from their respective allies on the Korean peninsula. Global arms sales hit a post-Cold War record of $2.2 trillion last year. And arms purchases outside China, Russia and the U.S. are projected to climb 23% next year to $241 billion.
In case anyone has forgotten amid the hubbub in the Middle East that China is the bad guy, the Pentagon has released a bloopers reel of Chinese fighter jets engaging U.S. aircraft flying near its borders in the East and South China Seas. The Pentagon says those Chinese jets are getting dangerously close, which is what Beijing says about U.S. aircraft near its borders and over waters it claims.