US basically facing World War III but Biden & Co. don’t act like it

Gen. Omar Bradley is often credited with the saying, “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.” The Biden administration does neither.

In September 2022, we argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Arsenals of Evil” — North Korea and Iran — couldn’t help the Kremlin retrieve its faltering position in Ukraine.

We were wrong.

We didn’t factor in Washington throwing in the towel after Putin’s “special military operation” was on the ropes.

The two rogue states, each as anti-American as it gets, are providing Putin with drones, artillery and cruise missiles to defeat the United States and our NATO allies in Ukraine, all while pursuing their nuclear weapons programs unabated.

To underscore the extent to which America has fallen behind, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, head of US Central Command, testified before Congress that “the Russians are firing five times as many artillery shells as the Ukrainians.”

Kurilla warned that Putin’s advantage in artillery shells would increase to 10 to 1 “in a matter of weeks.”

Russia is outproducing the US and NATO — churning out 250,000 artillery munitions per month, while NATO’s artillery coalition, led by France and the Czech Republic, is forced to scrounge on the open market to secure a one-time purchase of 800,000 rounds.

According to a senior European intelligence official, the US and Europe, collectively, can produce just 100,000 munitions each month.

And they’re not even doing that.

The arsenals of democracy are failing.

Franklin Roosevelt is likely turning in his grave at Hyde Park, especially given that it’s Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, now occupying the White House.

We’ve long urged Biden to put the country on a war footing to defeat Putin in Ukraine, deter future Russian aggression in Europe and check Chinese President Xi Jinping’s designs on Taiwan and the greater Indo-Pacific.

Democracy is in real danger of losing to tyranny.

Ukraine has now been at war for 777 days.

Yet here we are, without a plan to win or a sufficient level of weapons and munitions production to meet an array of cascading kinetic conflicts around the world, including Ukraine, Israel and Iranian-backed attacks on US forces and commercial shipping in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and the Red Sea.

Taiwan sits more exposed than ever.

Beijing undoubtedly sees the opening and is poised to exploit it.

We are no longer in either/or territory.

Biden lost that opportunity when he failed to put Putin down for the count by enabling Kyiv to retake Crimea.

Just as World War II required an “all of the above” response, so too does this increasingly kinetic World War III.

Yet Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, has been utterly derelict in their approach.

He’s left the nation badly exposed to Russia and China, a process that began when he prematurely withdrew US troops from Afghanistan.

Emerging exigencies, including Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and the growing potential for an all-out war between Israel and Iran, now require a bold new commitment from Biden. 

The White House must focus on winning this global war with Moscow and Beijing and their arsenal of evil partners.

Instead of recognizing the gravity of the overall strategic situation and leveling with the American people that we are, in effect, facing a World War III, the White House is admonishing US allies to tamp back their fights against our nation’s enemies so as to not risk Biden losing in Michigan or elsewhere.

Biden & Co. have told Israel to refrain from defeating Hamas in Rafah.

Likewise, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admonished Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, lest global oil prices rise — and, presumably, dim Biden’s re-election prospects come November.

Instead, Austin urged Ukraine to focus on military targets.

Sorry, but Russian oil refineries are military targets: They’re used to facilitate the transport of Russian troops and munitions to the front lines in Ukraine — and generate revenue to finance the war.

Biden, Blinken, Sullivan and Austin have lost the plot.

They’re aware of the US’s dire armaments production situation; they’ve borrowed munitions from forward-deployed arsenals in Israel and South Korea to aid in Ukraine’s war effort.

Yet Biden’s overall national intelligence strategy fails to realize that all of the dots it maps are connected — and, allegorically speaking, clearly form the maps of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Former President Barack Obama was right when he warned folks never to underestimate Biden’s ability to f–k things up.

The president is doing just that at a national security level, and at the worst possible moment.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.