WITH RAGING WARS AND AN ADDLED PRESIDENT, IT’S A PERILOUS MOMENT. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo is head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, he took part in a discussion at the liberal Brookings Institution. Paparo discussed at length the military strength of China — he called it “the most capable potential adversary in the world” — and the challenges facing the United States in countering China’s power in the region.
Paparo also addressed the growing costs of U.S. support of Ukraine, in its war with Russia, and Israel, in its war with Hamas and related organizations. This is from a report in the Defense Department publication defense.gov:
The United States has worldwide commitments and there are competing requirements for resources and systems. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel are depleting stocks the Indo-Pacific might need, Paparo said. He said that until this year the effect on his command by the delivery of systems to Ukraine and Israel was negligible. “But now, with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it is eating into the stocks…and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” he said. These high-end stocks are crucial in the Indo-Pacific, he said. “It imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and the quality of munitions, because [China] is the most capable potential adversary in the world,” Paparo said.
It was a sobering statement, but it was entirely consistent with reports we have heard for quite a while, especially concerning U.S. support for Ukraine. As early of May 2022, in the first months of the war, Pentagon officials acknowledged that the U.S. was taking “some risk” in depleting its weapons stockpiles to aid Ukraine. That situation only got worse as the war dragged on and devolved into a sort of present-day World War I, with both sides dug in and firing thousands of artillery shells at each other. In later months, the U.S. increased its weapons production specifically for the purpose of supporting Ukraine.
In addition, for months President Joe Biden has been preparing for the possibility of “Trump proofing” the war in Ukraine, that is, to commit U.S. resources to policies that former President Donald Trump, were he to win election, would find difficult to overturn once in office. Now that Trump has indeed won a second term, the Biden White House appears dead set on escalating hostilities in the already brutal Ukraine war.
In the last few days, Biden has removed restrictions on Ukraine’s use of the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, for long-range attacks inside Russia. Ukraine promptly fired U.S.-made missiles deep into Russian territory. At the same time, Biden has sent U.S. antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, reversing an earlier policy. Both moves were “part of a sweep of urgent actions that the lame-duck Biden administration is taking to help Kyiv’s faltering war effort,” in the words of the Washington Post. In a further escalation — and of course, there would be a response — Russia announced that it had fired a new hypersonic ballistic missile at Ukraine that could also strike U.S. facilities there.
The recent developments in Ukraine would be alarming in any context. But these events come as the 82-year-old President Biden’s apparent cognitive decline continues. Biden, of course, did not run for reelection because a secretive group of Democratic Party powerbrokers forced him out of the race, convinced that he was not up to a second term that would last until he was 86 years old.
Recently, Biden appeared to play almost no role in his final international conferences as president, the G20 summit in Brazil, and the APEC meeting in Peru. He took no press questions at either meeting. Then, in a post-summit visit to the Amazon rainforest, Biden appeared briefly, delivered a statement, and afterward just wandered off unsteadily into the woods.
Biden’s performance has done nothing to lessen fears that he is not capable of fully performing the duties of President of the United States. At the same time, he will be president for two more months. Given recent developments, those two months could be perilous indeed in Ukraine. Can a weakened Biden give the Ukraine crisis the attention and judgment it needs — as opposed to sitting by while aides do the job that should be the elected president’s?
Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign in late July solved a political problem for the Democratic Party, even though its nominee went on to lose, anyway. But Biden is still the president until January 20, and if he was not in good enough shape to campaign, why should anyone believe he is in good enough shape to govern?
On the campaign trail, Trump often brought up Biden’s competency issues. In August, I tweeted this: “Trump is right that this is a particularly dangerous period, isn’t he? The President of the United States has withdrawn from re-election because he is not mentally and physically up to the job. Now he appears to be minimally performing his role at president. And there are a lot of malign, aggressive actors in the world. That is dangerous, no?” That’s even more true now as wars worsen and Joe Biden enters his final, wobbly months as president.