The decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing is now having national security implications. President Biden recently let it slip during a TV interview that the U.S. is low on artillery munitions, at the same time he authorized sending millions of dollars more in military aid to Ukraine, including cluster munitions. The president's revelation set off new concerns about our open-ended commitment to provide weapons and ammo to Ukraine at a time when our domestic stockpiles are dwindling, and the U.S. faces increased demands from allies around the world.
Critics warn this is the result of decades of outsourcing U.S. manufacturing, which has left production unable to meet our ambitions on the world stage. "It seems globalist economics is defeating globalist foreign policy interventionism," writes Nathanael Blake, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, in a new piece for the Federalist.
"We're finding that our manufacturing ability is reduced, and we're not able to provide the Ukrainians with the weapons we want to provide to them," Blake tells KTRH. "And if we get drawn into a conflict and we're already struggling just to keep up with sharing things with allies, you can imagine just how bad that could be for the United States in a great power war."
Blake also points out the irony that the globalist interventionists are the same ones pushing global economics that hurt domestic manufacturing. "The same people who want to give lots of weapons to Ukraine, are generally the ones who did the most to deplete our manufacturing capacity," he says.
With President Biden telling the NATO summit this week that our commitment to helping Ukraine is for "as long as it takes," the U.S. will need to increase domestic production to keep the spigot of weapons flowing. "If we had more peacetime manufacturing, the big defense contractors wouldn't be quite as essential, and yet we'd still be better off in our ability to respond to threats," says Blake. "I think we're starting to see some movement toward bringing manufacturing back, and recognizing that it's not just an economic issue, but it's also a national security issue."