EXIT INTERVIEW: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley has had a momentous — and at occasions polarizing — four-year run as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff underneath Presidents Trump and Biden. In the second of a sequence of articles forward of the scheduled finish of his tenure in October, Gen. Milley sat down with senior Washington Times’ navy correspondent Ben Wolfgang to debate a number of the achievements and controversies of his time because the Pentagon’s highest-ranking navy officer.
U.S. weapons stockpiles is not going to drop beneath “acceptable levels of risk” regardless of the fixed circulate of arms to Ukraine, stated Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushing again on the concept America could also be placing itself at risk by sending such a large quantity of navy support to Kyiv in its battle with Russia.
In an unique interview with The Washington Times, Gen. Milley stated he and different prime Defense Department officers carefully monitor the quantity of American munitions available and received’t permit it to drop beneath a suitable threshold, although he wouldn’t be extra particular. His feedback come amid a rising debate in each political and nationwide safety circles in Washington about Ukraine, its prospects for a definitive victory towards the invading Russian military, and at what level the Biden administration could change course and get extra aggressive in pushing Ukraine towards peace negotiations.
There’s little question that the 18-month battle has been a drain on U.S. munitions stockpiles, at a time when many are warning the nation’s protection industrial base general is more and more pressured and unable to fulfill demand. Some nationwide safety analysts have sounded the alarm about each present shortfalls in American munitions and the flexibility to shortly replenish them within the occasion of an sudden battle.
But Gen. Milley stated the Pentagon is working carefully with the protection business to refill stockages as quickly as potential. He stated that the extent of support to Ukraine doesn’t and won’t endanger American nationwide safety.
“We monitor this every day for [Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin] and for the president. We give them reports every day,” he instructed The Times.
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The protection secretary’s “guidance to us is, ‘Do not, in any category of munitions, take us below levels that are acceptable levels of risk.’ I’m not going to go into those details, but we monitor it very, very closely,” Gen. Milley stated. “So we are not going to jeopardize our own national security needs and capabilities to engage in combat operations with ammunition stockages, etc. We’re not going to put ourselves at that level of risk.”
The arms outflow has been immense, dwarfing the quantities despatched by NATO allies to Kyiv, and embody greater than 2,000 Stinger antiaircraft methods, over 10,000 Javelin anti-armor methods, and greater than 2 million 155-mm artillery rounds, amongst different objects, the Pentagon stated this week.
Douglas R. Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and expertise, stated the U.S. protection business is at present producing new artillery rounds at a fee of 24,000 monthly and is on observe to provide in extra of 80,000 rounds monthly over the next yr because it ramps up in assist of Ukraine.
In a wide-ranging dialog in regards to the Ukraine-Russia battle, Gen. Milley pressured it’s far too early to attract any main conclusions about Ukraine’s two-month-old counteroffensive within the nation’s disputed Donbas area — regardless of new, reportedly “sobering” official assessments of Kyiv’s success to this point towards dug-in Russian forces. He acknowledged “there’s a lot of fog” in regards to the state of the Ukrainian advance, which by most accounts seems to be transferring extra slowly than Western navy observers and planners had hoped.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive, and the nation’s broader struggle over the course of the battle, have extremely depending on Western navy support, together with main shipments of U.S. artillery, anti-aircraft methods, missile protection batteries, and a bunch of different methods, weapons and gear. All instructed, the U.S. has given Ukraine greater than $41 billion value of navy support for the reason that begin of the battle in February 2022.
More just lately, no less than a number of the Biden administration’s strategic selections appear to have been pushed by munitions shortages, or the concern of them.
For instance, the administration’s selection this summer time to provide Ukraine with controversial cluster munitions was met with fury from critics who say the weapons pose a a lot greater danger of unintended deaths for civilians. But President Biden signaled in an interview with CNN that cluster munitions had been the one choice as a result of each Ukraine and the U.S. had been quick on key 155mm artillery rounds.
“And we’re low on it,” the president stated of these artillery rounds, taking the bizarre step of admitting publicly that U.S. stockpiles are drying up, although the precise figures stay categorized.
‘An existential fight’
Gen. Milley pressured that U.S. help goes far past numbers on a web page and is a bit of a a lot larger equation.
“It’s our job to make sure he, the secretary of defense, and the president stay continuously informed, and Congress, stay continuously informed about those levels [of munitions], and to work with industry in order to replenish things and so on, so forth,” Gen. Milley stated. “At the same time, we need to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to successfully defend itself. The issue of Ukraine is much bigger than Ukraine. For Ukraine, this is an existential fight. So the Russians are trying to overrun Ukraine. … So it’s an existential fight for Ukraine. But for Europe, for the United States, for other countries in the world, it’s much bigger than that.”
“It’s about a set of rules that were put in place by the United States, really, at the end of World War II that prevents large powers from arbitrarily changing borders by the use of military force for their own self-aggrandizement,” he stated.
Despite such excessive stakes, some latest knowledge counsel that Americans as an entire could also be souring on the heavy flows of U.S. support to Ukraine. A June Pew Research survey discovered that 28% of Americans now say the nation is giving “too much” support to Ukraine, up from simply 12% in May 2022, three months after Mr. Putin launched the invasion.
That shift has been pushed largely by a change in perspective amongst Republicans, 44% of whom now say the U.S. is offering an excessive amount of support, up from 17% in May 2022, the Pew report stated. The variety of Democrats who say America is offering an excessive amount of support has gone up from 8% to 14% over the identical time interval.
High-profile Republicans in Congress have more and more given voice to that view, tying the large quantity of U.S. support to the questionable proposition that Kyiv will ever obtain a transparent victory.
“Supplies that will take years to replenish are being exhausted by Ukraine in a matter of weeks,” a bunch of 19 congressional Republicans, together with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, wrote in a letter to President Biden earlier this yr. “There are appropriate ways in which the U.S. can support the Ukrainian people, but unlimited arms supplies in support of an endless war is not one of them. Our national interests, and those of the Ukrainian people, are best served by incentivizing the negotiations that are urgently needed to bring this conflict to a resolution.”
The notion that the U.S. and Ukraine ought to place a precedence on peace negotiations fairly than an open-ended battle might achieve extra traction over the remainder of 2023, particularly if Ukraine’s counteroffensive strikes alongside with out clear, high-profile progress.
Gen. Milley acknowledged that the Ukrainian forces face a tricky check to navigate lethal minefields and in the end attempt to pierce defensive strains that the Russians have spent months fortifying. But he stated it’s too early to attract conclusions about whether or not the counteroffensive will succeed.
“They are fighting on their own turf, but they’re executing offensive combined arms maneuver warfare, which is very, very difficult to do,” he stated of the Ukrainians. “And they’re going through some highly dense minefields that are obviously very dangerous.”
“There’s a lot of fog, there’s fear, there’s blood, there’s violence,” Gen. Milley stated. “And at the pointy end of the spear here, there are Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in very intense conventional warfare at a very high cost to both sides. And it is not over. And I think it would be premature to say victory or defeat one way or another just yet. It’s not over yet.”
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