In a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, the United States faces growing challenges on multiple fronts. Despite President Biden’s confidence in America’s strength, vulnerabilities are emerging. Political polarisation jeopardises support for allies like Ukraine, and military dominance is questioned, especially in the face of evolving asymmetrical warfare technologies. The U.S. must navigate complex situations, from Russia’s missile onslaught in Ukraine to the Middle East’s escalating tensions. Decisions made in this critical period may shape the nation’s role as a global power, influencing outcomes in Ukraine and the broader international arena.
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US Preeminence Is Threatened by a Real ‘Missile Gap’: Marc Champion
By Marc Champion
As recently as October, US President Joe Biden dismissed a question over whether the US could cope with supporting allies fighting two simultaneous wars, in Ukraine and Gaza. âWeâre the US for Godâs sake,â the most powerful country in the history of the world, he said on 60 Minutes, with the kind of exasperation that anyone should even ask.
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Yet risks have been rising fast over the past few months, and history is littered with examples of seemingly untouchable empires that proved suddenly vulnerable, succumbing to some combination of domestic division, external overextension or the loss of relative economic and military dominance.
Make no mistake, the US is fundamentally in rude health. That so many Americans seem to think Biden is destroying the economy is frankly puzzling to anyone living elsewhere: Which one would you prefer to have? Even so, the US is showing enough symptoms of late-empire dysfunction that the choices Americans make in this presidential election year may well determine whether Biden, or his interrogator, was right. The threat of a multi-theater expansion of the wars the US is involved with â all based on missile technologies and stocks in which Washingtonâs once absolute dominance has faded â is growing.
Americaâs most obvious weakness lies in its political polarization. Continued backing for Ukraine in a war that, at no cost to US lives, is simultaneously weakening a key geopolitical rival, and protecting stability for critical European markets has now become a partisan plaything. So too the federal debt ceiling and with it the potential for eroding faith in the US dollar, a golden ticket that systemically discounts US borrowing costs and is the envy of every other nation.
Yet the US isnât just being tested politically. Its military dominance also is in question, partly due to overextension. The invasion of Iraq and overlong mission in Afghanistan were draining debacles that allowed rivals, particularly China, to gain ground. But itâs also because the nature of armed conflict has changed since Russiaâs President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Drones and missiles have become powerful munitions of asymmetrical warfare, and here the US and its allies are rapidly becoming stretched.Â
Hundreds of Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as loitering drones, have showered down on Ukraine over the past two weeks, killing dozens in some of the largest barrages since the war began. Ukraine knocked most out of the sky, but the mortal threat is evident. Russiaâs aim is both to destroy the arms production facilities Ukraine is building, and to exhaust Kyivâs limited stocks of air-defense missiles. Once they run out, Putin would have good cause to believe he could break the current battlefield stalemate and achieve his original goal of subjugating Ukraine.
Russia has more than doubled its output of cruise and ballistic missiles to about 100 a month. It also has started making its own version of the cheap Shahed loitering drones it bought from Iran. Shooting all of these projectiles down requires immensely more complex and expensive systems that can take years, rather than weeks, to manufacture â and neither the US nor Europe has enough. So long as Ukraine lacks the long-range missiles to damage Putinâs factories and launch pads, Russia can go on firing for as long as it takes.
Demands on US missile- and air-defense resources are increasing in other theaters, too. The Hamas fusillades against Israel continue. The risk that Hezbollah, an organization with an estimated 100,000 rockets and ballistic missiles, pulls Lebanon into the war is growing. Even Israelâs vaunted Iron Dome defense system would then struggle to shoot them all down. The US has said itâs resupplying Israel with precision-guided missiles, artillery shells and Iron Dome backups, but again, stocks are limited.
At the same time, a US-led fleet is having to strike down missiles launched by Yemenâs Houthis, as the Iran-backed group targets commercial shipping through the Suez Canal. US ground forces are having to counter drones fired by other Iran-allied militias in Iraq and Syria. All of these are being fired in the name of ending Israelâs military campaign in Gaza.
US needs could escalate further. Iran sent a warship to back up the Houthis on New Yearâs Day, and on Tuesday a suspected Israeli drone strike killed a top Hamas leader in Lebanonâs capital Beirut, drawing threats of a response from Hezbollah. On Wednesday, bomb blasts killed more than 80 Iranian civilians marking the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corpsâ elite Quds force, who was killed in a 2020 US drone strike. That again drew retaliatory threats, although Iran hasnât yet  identified the âterroristsâ it said were responsible, and the US has denied responsibility. With elections in Taiwan due this month, the possibility of new missile deployment to Asia, to counter any reaction by China, canât be ruled out either
The US canât control the actions of others. Yet key decisions on whether to give Ukraine what it actually takes to halt Russia’s autocratic expansion, or to grow the missile- and air-defense production needed to meet new military threats, are Washingtonâs to make. So too the coordination of its responses in the Middle East to minimize the risk of a wider conflagration. These are US interests that should be no-go zones for campaign politics.
The Biden administration is far from the worst when it comes to foreign policy, but it has been too tactical. The US must define more clearly what success would be in Ukraine, and then do what it takes to achieve it. The war will continue at least for another year but could drag on much longer, unless Putin is convinced that victory on his terms is unachievable. That will require not just the funds now stuck in Congress, but also a significant expansion of the quantity and range of missiles â offensive and defensive â supplied to Kyiv. On Thursday, US National Security spokesman John Kirby told reporters the US would be imposing additional sanctions against those involved in supplying Russia with missiles, after North Korea sent ballistic missiles and launchers.
In the Mideast, the US needs a more proactive blueprint for Israel and Iran. Israelâs leaders need a direct, authoritative message that US support isnât unconditional. Iran should know the cost of using its proxies to destabilize regional economies and trade routes are simply too high to bear. This doesnât mean more Middle Eastern wars. But it also canât be based solely on shooting down the cheap missiles that Iran and its proxies use to achieve their political goals.
The US is still a great power. If it fails in Ukraine or the Middle East, if it allows alliances in Europe and the Far East to crumble, that will have been solely a matter of choice.  Â
Read also:
- Assessing Americaâs role as a global hegemony â Andreas Kluth
- đ Federal Reserve signals prolonged restrictive stance, open door to potential rate cuts in 2024
- đIsrael and Qatar: Unintended allies in the Hamas quagmire â Marc Champion
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