Opinion
Russia and America, the superpowers of last century, are led by men pledging to restore past greatness.
Vladimir Putin has said that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. He’s setting out to restore “Great Russia” by invading Ukraine. He claims it is part of Russia’s “spiritual space”.
Donald Trump said he would overcome “American carnage” and “make America great again”. Attacking Iran would help because “when it’s all over, the US will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before”. American rule would even “make Iran great again”.
That’s the marketing. What’s the reality?
Dumb use of power has produced dumb results. Both Russia and the US stand humiliated by much smaller nations. A couple of months ago, I likened their ill-conceived use of power to the proverbial dumb bag of hammers – “no amount of power can succeed if badly employed”.
But it now emerges that even their supply of hammers is in doubt. Russia’s supply of troops is under severe strain and the US is running out of armaments, we learnt on the weekend.
Putin and Trump are not dumb men. But their hubris has led them to do dumb things. It was hubristic of Putin and Trump to launch their wars. It is extraordinary incompetence that they are struggling to organise even the most basic elements of armed combat.
Russia has asked North Korea for another 30,000 troops, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Preparations have been under way in Russia’s Voronezh region since June to receive them,” he said in his nightly video address.
This follows North Korea’s dispatch of an estimated 14,000 troops to Russia two years ago. An estimated 2000 were killed and another 5000 injured.
But another 30,000 North Koreans is only enough to replace one month’s worth of Russians killed or wounded in the war, based on the shocking casualty rates of 2025. Every day last year, on average, Russia suffered 1145 casualties, according to Ukraine’s count.
The total carnage Putin has inflicted on his people from the outset of the war to the end of 2025 was an estimated 325,000 dead and another 900,000 wounded. “No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,” reports Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
According to the independent Moscow Times, an increasingly desperate regime has been paying big sums for recruits, up to $100,000 for a year’s service, in a country where the median income is about $14,000.
Yet the flow of new sign-ups has slowed by about one-third so far this year compared to the corresponding period last year, according to the independent news outlets Vyorsta and IStories.
Putin has run recruitment efforts in Russian prisons, among homeless people, immigrants, university students. He’s even been luring men from Africa under false pretences.
He’s avoided highly unpopular mobilisations since his call-up of 300,000 reservists in 2022 provoked protests. But there are gathering indications that he’s about to conduct another, perhaps after Russia’s parliamentary elections due in September.
One sign? Russia, without explanation, this month shut its railway border crossings with Finland, Estonia and Latvia “temporarily”. These were popular destinations for Russian men fleeing the 2022 mobilisation.
“We have clear intelligence that Russia is preparing a new and quite significant wave of mobilisation,” Zelensky said on the weekend.
Also on the weekend we learnt that the Pentagon was running out of critical weapons systems.
The US waged 13 consecutive days of attacks on Iran and, on Thursday, Trump told reporters that “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before.” But, after meeting his top military commanders on Friday, all attacks halted on Saturday.
The New York Times explained that the reason was “particular concern that intensifying the war could dangerously drain the Pentagon’s already diminished stockpile of Patriot anti-missile interceptors and other air defence munitions in the Middle East”, wrote Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, “cautioned privately that resuming major combat operations against Iran was doable but that it would dangerously deplete interceptors available”, they reported. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters are among other credible US media that followed up with confirmation of the Times′ report.
The top concern was supply of the Patriot missile interceptor, a defensive weapon for protecting the assets of the US and its Gulf allies. In the previous week, two Iranian ballistic missiles streaked through air defences and struck a Jordanian Air Force base which the US has been using to attack Iran. One of them killed three American soldiers.
At the outset of the war on Iran, the US held about 2330 top-performing Patriot interceptors and about 400 older ones. By late April, more than 1200 had been fired, about half the total stockpile. The supply has much diminished since.
The White House has told US media that it will not update numbers for reasons of national security. In other words, the US doesn’t want to advise its enemies of potential vulnerabilities.
What about replenishments? Lockheed Martin delivered about 630 Patriot missiles to the Pentagon last year. But this year, replacements are arriving at a rate of only about 20 a month. Why so few? Because 18 countries use Patriots. US Gulf allies have fired about 600 in this war. Ukraine has procured another 600 or so in the course of its defence against Russia. And Lockheed is trying to supply all its customers.
The Patriots are expensive at about $US4 million apiece. But the US defence budget approved for 2026 is $US1 trillion, one-third of all military spending on earth.
Now this vast apparatus of 1.3 million active-duty troops is hostage to a supply choke point for a $US4 million item because of poor inventory management and planning.
The Russians lack men and the US lacks munitions. To continue wars they chose, unprovoked. This is not national greatness. This is perhaps better described as dumb and dumber.
Peter Hartcher is both international and political editor. His political column appears on Saturdays.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
