At the start of World War II, then United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously vowed that America would become the “great arsenal of democracy”, by which he meant that the US stood ready to supply weapons to every nation fighting at that time against Nazi Germany.

In the current Ukraine war, the Americans are still fulfilling this critical rule; notwithstanding the efforts of the Europeans, the US remains the most significant single supplier of weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian military presently fighting to repel the Russian invasion.