It may appear at times that the U.S. can call on a bottomless pit of military stores to supply Ukraine. Increasingly, however, western allies are balking at taking any more equipment out of their inventories to support the eastern European country’s war against Russia.
It’s an untidy, uncomfortable aspect of alliance politics that was acknowledged publicly on Friday by the secretary general of NATO.
”Some allies are now raising the issue of whether these stocks are depleted too much,” Jens Stoltenberg said after his meeting in Brussels with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (He did not name the allies in question.)
Germany has been particularly vocal about the impact the war in Ukraine has had on its military stores. The country’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, has been quoted on several occasions over the last two months saying that the Bundeswehr’s weapons reserve is getting low and ”clearly at this point … we have reached our limit.”
Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand made a similar point last spring and acknowledged the dilemma again this summer during an interview with CBC Radio’s The House.
”It is not sufficient for us to continue to draw down on the supplies of the Canadian Armed Forces,” Anand said on Aug. 5. Läs artikel