America's Attrition Trap

Aircraft on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, Laem Chabang Port, Thailand, September 2026 Chalinee Thirasupa / Reuters NADIA SCHADLOW is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. In 2017, she served as U. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy in the first Trump administration. More & Download Print unlock this feature or Sign in. Save Sign in and save to read later Copy This is a subscriber-only feature. or Sign in. Chicago MLA APSA APA Chicago Cite not available at the moment MLA Cite not available at the moment APSA Cite not available at the moment APA Cite not available at the moment Request reprint permissions here. When Russia invaded Ukraine again in early 2022, it appeared to possess overwhelming military superiority. Days before the invasion, the chairman of the U. Joint Chiefs of Staff told lawmakers that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of a full-scale assault; speaking to The New York Times, Ukrainian commanders said that they believed that their forces had little chance against the more than 100,000 Russian troops that had massed on their border. Yet because it could not swiftly translate its vast resources into sustained combat power at the front, Russia failed to employ its capabilities effectively and take Kyiv. But its material and manpower reserves allowed Russia to survive its early setbacks. Russia could mobilize more personnel, draw on large ammunition stocks, increase weapons production, and turn to partners such as North Korea to sustain its fight. Russia developed a theory of victory that proposed that it did not need to defeat Ukraine decisively if it could outlast it, wearing it down while waiting for Europe’s and the United States’ political commitment to weaken. Attrition gave Russia a military advantage. It also exposed a different problem among Ukraine’s powerful NATO backers: aggregate power does not necessarily translate into the capacity to sustain a prolonged, high-consumption war. Recent wars have exposed the gap between nominal power and military capability. The United States and NATO have far greater economic and military power than Russia does. Yet a war of attrition measures power differently. GDP cannot be fired from artillery tubes. Total defense spending cannot, itself, intercept missiles. The defense industries of Ukraine’s partners were not built to replace ammunition rapidly; they were organized around peacetime production. They thus struggled to convert their latent potential quickly enough into shells, interceptors, and other usable military capabilities. Russia and NATO thus encountered the capacity gap in almost opposite ways.