Of empty threats and paper tigers

The Arsenal of Democracy Isn’t

The erstwhile “arsenal of democracy” is neither a democracy nor an arsenal. It’s a pretentious empty shell.

As I originally wrote in my July 10, 2022 article Wunderwaffe Du Jour:

“The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.”

The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare.

And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.

There is simply no way this domestic US industry can expeditiously expand its production. It would literally take years – probably a full decade – for the US to expand its military production to a seriously potent industrial scale.

For one, the labor pool for these industries is extremely finite and highly specialized. In the overwhelmingly financialized and service-oriented US economy, there is a shocking dearth of technical expertise of ALL kinds.

It’s not simply a boomer cliché that “kids these days are innocent of almost any mechanical know-how”.

If the US wants to staff new armaments factories any time soon, it will have to import the skilled labor from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Beyond that, the permitting of new factories, with the attendant bureaucratic delays, public hearings, environmental impact studies, and various special interest road-blocking…well, everyone knows how these things work now in America.

It took five years to build the Hoover Dam in the early 20th century. It would take FIFTY here in the early 21st century – if it could be built at all.

Those clamoring for the US to intervene in the Ukraine war in order to “teach those filthy Russians a lesson they’ll never forget” simply have no conception of the catastrophe that would ensue were their dreams to be fulfilled.

Consider:

• Antiquated, clapped-out aircraft (except for a new air-superiority fighter that’s far too expensive to risk damaging in a fight, can’t fly supersonic without blasting its stealth paint right off, and isn’t superior in any way)

• Naval officers so poorly trained they're incapable of conning their inadequately-maintained rustbuckets in open sea-lanes and/or harbors without crashing into other vessels or land masses

• Recruiting and/or retention falling far short of stated goals

• Physical fitness and/or capability requirements repeatedly reduced in the name of political correctness and “equity"

• An entirely politicized officer corps more concerned with enforcing the strictures of Woke dogma than with winning wars

These are but a few of the things that have rendered American military might into nothing more than a sick, unfunny joke.

Throw in A) a majority of civilians with no stomach for personal sacrifice, entirely bereft of the will to win and can-do spirit attaining victory requires, and B) a gormless, profiteering political class whose primary goal is to indefinitely extend wars in which there is no discernible national interest whatsoever, and a once-great nation soon finds itself mired to the axles in fruitless, 20-year conflicts that end in shameful, tucked-tail skedaddles å la our misadventure in Afghanistan, in which “the world’s strongest military” was pitted against donkey-riding, ill-equipped 14th century throwbacks…and lost.

No nation whose military is so thoroughly hollowed-out an empty shell as the Former USA’s is has any business calling itself “the world’s lone superpower,” that’s for sure. This could turn out to be something of a blessing in disguise for those who will do battle against said empty-shell military, should a horrific Civil War v2.0 ever come to pass.