Putin puckers up as Kyiv raises the heat, NATO suits up, and Israel digs in

(Originally published June 18 in “What in the World“) Russian President Vladimir Putin will go shopping for more munitions in Pyongyang.

Russia long ago turned to North Korea for ammunition for its war in Ukraine, and Western intelligence fear it’s paying with technical assistance to advance Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program. Putin’s visit will not only solidify his supply lines, but give North Korean leader Kim Jong Un valuable street cred among his own constituents.

Since the U.S. resumed its flow of weapons to Ukraine and U.S. President Joe Biden removed more restrictions on Kyiv can use them, Russian invaders are under increasing pressure for not only more ammo, but more advanced ammo. Moscow recently began rolling out more advanced missile launchers to replace older versions being picked off by long-range U.S. Atacms fired from across the border in Ukraine.

After winning permission from the White House to use its U.S.-supplied weapons to hit forces in Russia being used to attack it, Ukraine has used Atacms to destroy Russian S-300 and S-400 air defense systems defending Crimea peninsula and Himars to hit targets across the northeastern border in the Russian province of Belgorod. Moscow has responded by deploying its newer and more advanced S-500 air defense missile system.

U.S. President Joe Biden secretly relented in February on sending Atacms to Ukraine. Last month, he lifted his restriction on allowing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons against targets inside Russia, but stipulated that it not use the long-range Atacms and only hit targets being used to assault the province of Kharkiv.

Biden’s restriction doesn’t rule out using Atacms inside Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014. Ukraine is also innovating new ways to use its Patriot missiles to down Russian aircraft far behind enemy lines. By putting the U.S.-supplied anti-missile batteries on German-supplied mobile missile launchers, Ukraine has moved normally stationary Patriots closer to the front lines. That enabled them to shoot down a Russian airborne radar plane over the Sea of Azov in January.

Such attacks, including those using Himars against anti-missile batteries in Belgorod, raise questions about whether Kyiv is violating Biden’s rule on using U.S. equipment to hit purely offensive targets menacing Kharkiv. Washington’s European allies are reportedly already pressuring Biden to lift that restriction as well.

The White House has also reportedly expressed concerns about Ukraine using its own weapons to hit Russian early-warning radar systems, which are used to detect an incoming nuclear strike.

Russia’s invasion has sparked a massive increase in defense spending almost everywhere. Twenty members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 32 total members will this year achieve the alliance’s target for defense spending of 2% of GDP. That follows last year’s 6.8% increase in global military spending, the largest since 2009, which brought annual weapons outlays to their highest since the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute began tracking them in 1998. As a result of this surge, global defense companies are hiring at the highest rate since the end of the Cold War, according the Financial Times.

For a fascinating, but sobering, appraisal of what it takes to actually win a war, read the latest analysis of the task facing Israel in Gaza by America’s top general in Iraq and Afghanistan (and former CIA director) David Petraeus in Foreign Affairs. Petraeus and co-authors Meghan O’Sullivan and Richard Fontaine remind us of a lesson Washington has failed to learn since it succeeded in overthrowing the Nazis and Imperial Japan in World War II: defeating an enemy on its own turf (what Petraeus & Co. dub “regime change”) requires not only the near-complete annihilation of the enemy, but the complete occupation of the enemy’s territory and the subsequent rebuilding of its nation. The U.S. not only invaded Germany and Japan, but it also occupied them for decades, paying to rebuild them and overseeing the reconstitution of their governments.

Winning a war goes well beyond (and costs much more) than delivering pinpoint explosions from the safety of a Midwest bunker or dropping bombs from tens of thousands of feet in the air. Total victory requires total war—and total investment. If that’s not a cost a nation is willing to pay in lives and treasure, it should consider whether it should go to war at all. Is Israel prepared to occupy and rebuild Gaza in its own image? The answer appears to be ‘yes.’ Is the U.S. really willing to commit troops to occupy and rebuild an independent Ukraine? Is Russia willing to occupy and absorb a Ukrainian province? Is the U.S. prepared to occupy and rebuild not only Taiwan, but most of mainland China? Is China willing and able to occupy Taiwan and re-absorb it?

We already know the answers.