"Amid global military overstretch and weapons shortages, the U.S. is employing strategies like "division of labor" and "strategic sequencing" to prolong its global dominance — at the cost of client states' stability and global peace."

The US has recently paused the shipment of some weapons and munitions to Ukraine "due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low," Politico reported.

This is only the most recent development amid a growing military industrial crisis unfolding across the collective West as Washington and its network of client states wage increasingly intense and protracted wars and proxy wars including in Ukraine against Russia, across the Middle East against Iran and its allies, and as the US prepares for similar conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Politico would note air defense systems, other precision guided weapons, and even artillery shells were among the shipments being paused due to concerns regarding depleted US stockpiles.

Since the beginning of Russia's Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, initial surges of US-European weapons and munitions have steadily decreased despite promises to expand military industrial production across the collective West. In some cases, US weapons already faced critical shortages even before the conflict in Ukraine expanded in 2022.

In January of 2022, Saudi Arabia announced critical shortages of Patriot air defense interceptors, exhausting them amid its US-backed war with neighboring Yemen. The US, even at that point, was unable to replace Saudi Arabia's depleted stockpiles forcing Riyadh to borrow missiles from other Persian Gulf states operating the systems.

Lockheed Martin, which produces Patriot missiles, does so at a rate of about 500-600 interceptors a year, with plans to expand production to only 650 by the year 2027. Ukraine's requirements alone far exceed this quantity with Russia producing between 720-840 Iskander ballistic missiles, according to Ukraine's military intelligence agency, that only the Patriot missile system is capable of intercepting.

Each incoming ballistic missile requires at a minimum 2 Patriot missiles to increase the probability of a successful intercept. This means that even by 2027 Lockheed will only be producing about half the missiles Ukraine would require just to intercept Russian Iskander missiles each year, and that's if every single missile Lockheed made was sent to Ukraine - which they won't be.

Similar shortages and failures to sufficiently expand production are faced by US Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), Javelin anti-tank missiles, counter-battery radar systems, and even 155mm artillery shells.

Regarding artillery shells, despite benefiting from a rare exception where US government-owned facilities were used to expand shell production regardless of insufficient "demand signals" and poor "business cases," and a head start of several years before the 2022 SMO began, production has only been expanded to about 75,000 shells a month with the target of 100,000 shells expected to be reached by the end of 2025. Together with European shell production, Western media still reports Russia enjoys a 3:1 advantage in artillery shell production.

The production of other, more sophisticated military systems is lagging even further behind Russian military industrial output. And as is the case with Patriot missiles, even if the US and Europe could produce comparable quantities of these weapons and munitions, it is impractical to send all of it to Ukraine.

Finite Arms for Infinite Wars

As per stated US foreign policy objectives, the US requires large amounts of military equipment including Patriot missiles for its continued wars and proxy wars far beyond just Ukraine, including in the Middle East against Iran (where huge quantities of air defense missiles were likewise exhausted in just 12 days of recent fighting) and amid its military build-up across the Asia-Pacific region vis-a-vis China.

The US is relying on several strategies to match the reality of limited means of military industrial production with Washington's desire for unlimited war worldwide including what US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has referred to as a "division of labor," through which the US is forcing its client states to divert public money from actual public interests toward weapons procurements and production in service of Washington's wars and proxy wars worldwide.

NATO's recent announcement of bloc-wide spending increases of up to 5% of each member state's GDP was in direct response to Secretary Hegseth's directive delivered in February of this year.

Another strategy is often referred to as "strategic sequencing" in which the US concentrates available resources on one designated adversary at a time rather than attempting to fight multiple nations at once.

A 2024 Marathon Initiative paper titled, "Strategic Sequencing, Revisited," by Wess Mitchell would note:

"The idea of sequencing is simply to concentrate resources against one opponent in order to weaken its disruptive energies before turning to another, either to deter or defeat it. Sequencing is necessary because power is not infinite. For even the strongest of states, it is bounded by all kinds of things: distance, money, attention span. By dealing decisively with one opponent before other threats have fully manifested, a great power seeks to avoid a situation where either its military resources are stretched too thin and it suffers catastrophic defeat, or it has to shoulder the financial burdens of ramping up for a sustained war against all enemies in all directions concurrently, with concomitant strains on its economic base and society. The goal is to gain an advantage in competition by manipulating the factor of time."

Thus, victory in Ukraine by defeating Russian forces is not necessarily Washington's objective, but rather overextending Russia militarily, economically, and politically by entangling it in a costly and protracted conflict increasingly fueled by European military support, freeing up US resources to be concentrated on Iran and ultimately China.

Because Russia is committed to its military operations in Ukraine, it is unable to commit significant resources to counter US wars and proxy wars elsewhere, including in Syria where the US was able to successfully overthrow the government late last year, or Iran which the US and its Middle East proxies - particularly Israel - seek to "weaken its disruptive energies before turning to another" - "another" being China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US is using a "division of labor" both in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as well, forcing proxies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Japan, South Korea, the island province of Taiwan, and the Philippines to divert large amounts of public resources to likewise procure and produce weapons to augment US military power and industrial production.

This system of client states together with America's global-spanning military infrastructure, global-spanning navy, and its extensive network of political interference both enhancing existing client states and creating new ones, allows the US to geopolitically outmaneuver the emerging multipolar world order despite the advantages nations like Russia and China possess in terms of economic strength and military industrial production.

An Unsustainable But Still Dangerous Balancing Act

The strategies of "division of labor" and "strategic sequencing" employed by the US, while seemingly pragmatic, are ultimately attempts to manage an unsustainable equation.

By outsourcing military burdens to client states and prioritizing adversaries one-by-one, Washington seeks to extend its reach without overextending its immediate resources.

However, these tactics come at a significant cost, compelling US client states to divert critical public funds towards military expenditures, often at the expense of domestic needs and social welfare. This coercive and ultimately unsustainable approach, exemplified by NATO's increased spending directives drains the collective wealth of nations - a process already undermining social cohesion and economic stability across the collective West.

Moreover, the inherent unpredictability of international relations means that a carefully planned "sequence" can be easily disrupted by unforeseen events, potentially leaving the US and its client states vulnerable on multiple fronts. The margins of error continue to narrow leaving less and less room for contingencies created both by chance and by counter-strategies employed by nations like Russia, China, and Iran individually or working in cooperation.

While nations leading the creation of a multipolar world cannot and should not create an equal but opposing network of client states to disrupt Washington's "division of labor" and "strategic sequencing," they could encourage better cooperation across the multipolar world to defend against US political interference, economic coercion, and military aggression.

Not only could greater cooperation negate the advantages the US uses to offset the limits of its own military industrial production, it could also disrupt the careful balancing act the US is performing to cling to its unipolar world order.

While multipolarism to many seems inevitable, it would be reckless to indulge in complacency.

The collapse of Syria in late 2024, the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran in June 2025, and the obedience US client states across Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific still demonstrate in pursuit of US geopolitical objectives is a sobering reminder that despite what appears to be its irreversible decline, the US remains a significant threat to global peace, stability, and prosperity. It is a threat that will remain until the nations of the world create the conditions within which the US is left no choice but to cooperate with all other nations rather than continue to impose itself upon them.

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