In his long congressional career, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has occasionally been right, but not often. And when he isn’t right, he is explosively, extravagantly wrong.
We have to remember that he was the late Sen. John McCain’s most worshipful follower, playing Tonto to McCain’s Lone Ranger. When McCain and Ted Kennedy pushed their immigration bill — which would have opened the southern border long before what President Joe Biden is doing now — Graham was a primary advocate for it.
Now, Graham is pushing an idea that is at least as bad and maybe worse: the admission of Ukraine to NATO before Putin’s war against it is over. He said: “Ukrainian NATO membership is vital to the future security of Europe and the world. I believe there is an overwhelming majority of senators supporting this proposition.”
Wiser men, such as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, have said that Ukraine should become a NATO member but only after the Russia war is over.
It’s obvious what would happen if Graham got his wish and Ukraine were admitted to NATO now. Ukraine would — and would have to — invoke the Article 5 provision in the NATO treaty for mutual defense, and we — and the other NATO nations — would be at war with Russia.
Graham’s idea is so stupid that it’s hard to believe that any large number of senators would support it. Aid to Ukraine still flows — the only good decision that Biden has made as president — while support for it is diminishing. But there is a problem with our continuing aid: Like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, our defense arsenal is just about bare.
Biden’s announcement that he would send “cluster bombs” — ones that are released by a larger casing holding dozens of “bomblets” that are effective against troop concentrations but not vehicles — was a shock to some Democrats. They practically want us to outlaw cluster bombs. About 100 nations (including most NATO members) have agreed to never use them, but the United States and Ukraine haven’t.
Biden said his decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine was not because they’re what the Ukrainians need but because we are running out of other munitions. He said: “[T]he Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. The ammunition — they call them 155-millimeter weapons. This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.”
So, let’s give them whatever we have lying around, not what they need.
The reason we are low on ammunition is not new to faithful readers of this column. We’re running so low on critical munitions — artillery rounds, short-range missiles, and more — because Biden, despite his half-hearted orders to replenish our arsenal, has found it nearly impossible to do so. (RELATED: Charlie Brown’s Pentagon)
Some strategists have said, for example, that we’d run out of critical munitions in less than a week if we defended Taiwan against the coming Chinese attack. This brings us to the question of our defense industrial base.
The defense industrial base comprises the companies that either regularly manufacture munitions and weapon systems or can quickly convert to doing so. It has shrunk massively over the past four decades, for two reasons.
One, major defense contractors have consolidated their businesses. Lockheed-Martin was, not that long ago, two separate companies. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas have also combined.
Two, major defense contractors have either disappeared altogether or survived by moving some of their operations overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs.
It has gotten so bad that we now have only four major commercial companies capable of building naval combatant ships.
In the novel Ghost Fleet, a super-sophisticated Chinese attack on the U.S. results in Chinese occupation of Hawaii. Our bacon is saved by the bravery of our forces and by a little old lady on the board of directors of Walmart who demands that all the companies’ stores use 3D printers to supply the military with spare parts.
Such novels are usually the only way to interest people in the defense industrial base, a topic that is among the most sleep-inducing — second only to the inadequacy of our defense acquisition system, which too often fails to get our warriors what they need when they need it. In the novel, the defense industrial base is a humorous sidebar to the real plot.
As this column has repeatedly said, the most important question of funding our military is not how large the budget is but how the money is spent. Too much — and I’m sure it is in the tens of billions of dollars — is wasted on political nonsense, of which there is an almost endless list, including funding for inadequate weapon systems, inadequate funding for better weapon systems combined with funding for unnecessary facilities, and transgender surgeries.
In short, anything in the DOD budget that doesn’t increase the lethality and readiness of the force should be eliminated. But, because of congressionally imposed requirements, never was so much spent by so many to so little result.
That brings us to the ongoing problem of inadequate resources and the inadequate capacity of our defense industrial base. Consider the latest example.
The aircraft carrier USS George Washington is finally back at sea. Its four-year refueling and extensive overhauling was extended to six years because of a host of problems, including the COVID pandemic, supply-chain problems, the need to redo work done defectively, and encountering unexpected things that had to be fixed before the ship could return to duty. We can expect similar delays in the refueling/overhauling of other aircraft carriers.
The question is not only supplying parts for the ships. It’s the considerable difficulty in getting the skilled technicians who can do the work. For example, it takes about four years to train a journeyman welder to qualify to work on nuclear ships, especially submarines.
This would be a great concern even if it were not indicative of similar and related problems affecting all the services. One of my pals is the CEO of a midsized electronics firm. His company manufactures some of the “black boxes” that are critical aviation components. As he often reminds me, if he ordered parts today, it would be 12 to 18 months before they were delivered.
We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. No other free nation can claim that title.
China is an arsenal but a communist dictatorship. It is also the only major source of rare earth metals. China is restricting the purchase of gallium and germanium, which are key to manufacturing computer chips. You can’t build modern weapon systems without a plentiful supply of those minerals.
With Bidenomics governing our economy, we can’t afford to rebuild our defense industrial base. Even if the entire defense budget — over $800 billion this year — were devoted to it, it couldn’t be done in the current business-unfriendly commercial environment. Moreover, our allies are no help. Almost all of them take a mercantilist approach to defense spending. (RELATED: Joe Biden Touts ‘Bidenomics,’ Ignores Inflation)
What can we do? Not much except to continue to rely on foreign sources for critical needs. To rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and probably take at least a decade to accomplish.
Any nation that lacks a reliable defense industrial base is vulnerable. Warmongering fools such as Lindsey Graham are no help.
