An Army Marches On Its ______

For millennia before Napoleon, armies marched on their stomachs. While the hunger or health of an army was only one among many factors predicting its success, it was probably consistently among the most important.

We might consider a battle like Culloden Moor in April 1746, wherein, perhaps, historical reconstructions might note superior numbers, training, tactics, or command for the British-Hanoverian army, and failing command, control, and morale in a Jacobite army that had been on English soil only a few months prior, before suddenly turning north and seeking refuge in the Scottish Highlands. All of these arguments have their merits, but it's also worth noting two data points from the week before the battle:

1. The city of Inverness was one of the last major supply sites for the Jacobite army by Spring 1746, necessitating its defense against the Duke of Cumberland's government troops. Cumberland's army, meanwhile, brought plenty of food stocks not only over land, largely on military roads constructed during and after the last Jacobite rising in 1715, but also by sea, courtesy of the Royal Navy. We can debate the wisdom of Cumberland's staff distributing brandy by the gallon to the regiments in celebration of his birthday, April 15, but the act of largesse also suggests strongly that this army was well-provisioned.
2. The Jacobites also anticipated the distribution of brandy, and some units notably had orders not only for a night march, but for attacking with melée weapons. Implements such as sword, spear, and bayonet were typically easy-to-hand for the pre-modern soldier on the march. No commissariat particularly necessary, beyond making sure they were sharp. Food was a different matter.

So too, by the early modern period, were the major necessities of firearms. A soldier might carry his gun and supplies for a few days at most, but the logistical train had begun in the early modern period to require more and more stores of powder and shot, in addition to foodstuffs. Even in the 1740s, and really for at least a century or two beforehand in Europe, armies moved on something more than their stomachs alone.

Move to the present, however, and the Institute for the Study of War (among others) notes terms like "defense-industrial base" (DIB) repeatedly in its reports and updates. One could add the term Logistical / Operational Train ("LOT" for our purposes) or any of its cognates, for how the products of a defense-industrial base make their way to a given theater of operations. Both are relevant for the story broken by Politico, that the Pentagon had suspended various forms of aid to Ukraine, including air defense assets, at a time of increasing Russian strikes.

One relevant consideration is the global supply situation in February 2022, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's famous line, "I need ammunition, not a ride." Checking ChatGPT's references to public sources, the Biden administration at the time may have boasted some 3,000 missiles with which to stock its global supply of Patriot air defense systems. Over the past three years, U.S. production might have topped out around 500 new units per year, while Ukraine alone fired about 1,000 at incoming Russian ordinance. Doing the math, the global supply would seem to have come out ahead, but this comes against the backdrop of a second consideration:

The DIB might be keeping up in some respects, but the LOT is imposing more demands. NATO allies, now including Finland, are maintaining a frontier with Russia that is longer and more dangerous in many respects than they have seen for a long time — Estonia wants some of those air defense assets, too! More than that, American-Israeli defense agreements reactivated in dramatic fashion after October 7, 2023, and while North Korean saber rattling has continued apace in Eastern Asia, the Chinese menace to Taiwan — not least by air — has become more evident and threatening.

Here then is the third consideration, by far my least favorite to share as a humanist and pro-Ukrainian. The cuts are unfortunate both in the fact and in the timing, and it's easy, not least for Ukrainian civilians, to feel hard done-by, all the more with promised stocks of weapons now apparently on the Pentagon's chopping block. But as of 2022, and all the more as of 2014, Ukraine was not a key U.S. ally, nor the regional icon of a vested, strategic interest of the United States. As of 1973, if not 1947, Israel has been. As of 1989, if not 1949, the same with Taiwan. Historical longevity only means so much, but historical longevity for these two particular recipients of American aid comes with geopolitical reasoning that is not hard to guess:

Whatever accidents of history informed the creation and rise of the Israeli state under British and French auspices, by the time of the October War it was pretty clear that the U.S. — home of the largest Jewish population outside Israel — had cultural, economic, and not least geopolitical reasons to support this unusual legacy of the era of national imperialism. Israel's marked contrast in political stability, liberal-elite culture, form of government, and military professionalism to its near neighbors also recommends it as an ally worth maintaining, even setting aside its current defense procurement agreements.

Likewise Taiwan: I suspect that few observers in 1894-95 would have missed the significance for Chinese shipping, such as it was, of losing the island of Formosa as it was then called to the rising empire of Japan. The Portuguese and Dutch had contested the island centuries earlier for much the same reason, and we can easily imagine, not only symbolically but also logistically, what Taiwan might mean in Chinese hands for prospects of future influence peddling, if not kinetic operations, in the larger Asia-Pacific region.

Put this all together in the age of anti-missile-missiles, fiber optic drones, and a million other pieces that make up the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), and we see that the Pentagon really does have hard choices to make. Even with one of the most expansive and reliable LOT systems in human history, the American DIB possesses neither infinite stocks nor infinite production capacity. Supplies of food are the least of its concerns. Without ramping up a whole lot more than it has done, and without passing along more costs for that defense-industrial expansion to mere rhetorical supporters of Ukraine (like me!), the U.S. will indeed struggle to support even the most obvious and salutary causes beyond its core strategic interests. Israel and Taiwan really are essential to American security in key regions of the globe. Ukraine makes a strong and impassioned case, and, just speaking as a man, one that appeals to my heart as well as my head. But if, as I hope would never happen, Zelenskyy's government faces its own showdown at Culloden, it's asking for a lot more than food stocks and hand weapons. Let's hope their Russian adversaries are even more strongly supplied with vodka than Cumberland's regiments were with brandy.