If you spend time listening to Trump/Musk/Sacks/Bitcoin anti-Ukraine discourse you’ll hear the following argument: while the U.S. launched (by remote control presumably) its Russia/Ukraine proxy war to degrade Russian military power, quite the opposite has happened. Now the U.S. is running out of artillery shells, thus degrading its own military power. Meanwhile, Ukraine is doomed because we can’t send them any more and Russia can sustain its supply forever. In other words, the U.S. is owned; Russia is on the march; Ukraine is doomed.

This is a bogus argument. The U.S. hasn’t run out of artillery ammunition. Not even close. The U.S. has what amounts to a one-and-a-half-war doctrine. The U.S. needs to be able to fight two major wars simultaneously or, short of that, needs to be able to defeat its adversary in one major war while holding its adversary in the second at bay long enough to win war one and move on to winning war two. A bureaucracy like the Pentagon takes the official doctrine and computes what