Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder to all sole superpowers: be gracious in victory and benevolent to the defeated.

(Originally published Feb. 27 in “What in the World“) Russian artillery continue to pound Ukrainian forces, particularly around the besieged city of Bakhmut and liberated Kherson.

Putin claims the West is determined to dismember Russia, which thanks to his invasion of Ukraine, isn’t completely untrue.

Putin blames the invasion on the West’s determination to imperil Russian security through the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which having already admitted all of Russia’s former satellites in eastern Europe, was closing in on adding Ukraine. That would not only have turned the historic birthplace of the Russian people against Moscow, but deprived Russia’s navy of its historically vital access to Crimea. The West can argue that NATO’s expansion eastward was a response to Putin’s aggressive behavior.

But Putin came to power in 2000, not even a decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when Russia was reeling economically and NATO’s expansion had begun by adding Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Putin promised to “get Russia off its knees.” Arguably the West might have prevented the invasion of Ukraine by doing more to provide post-Soviet Russia with the sort of support it provided post-Nazi Germany after World War II. But hindsight is always 20/20. The U.S. was too busy reveling in its role as sole superpower and enjoying the TV sitcom “Friends” to make any itself.

Now, as Washington and its allies posture for a two-front war against Russia and China, the military-industrial complex is having trouble keeping up. Ukraine is running out of ammunition, Western ammo is running low and Taiwan is waiting for $19 billion in undelivered weapons purchases.

Having long ago pacified Russia, the West thought the days of conventional warfare were over and mothballed the tanks and howitzers of conventional warfare in favor of smaller stockpiles needed to fight radical pockets of cultural and religious revanchism in the Middle East and North Africa.

The latest U.S. defense budget attempts to belatedly address this by allowing the Pentagon to negotiate multi-year purchase contracts which would in theory remove some of the hurdles to expanding production facilities. China fears it would likely lose if it invaded to Taiwan, but a report last month by a U.S. think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimated that, if the U.S. had to fight China for Taiwan, the U.S. would run out of precision-guided weapons in less than a week.