Defense analyst Loren Thompson devotes a recent Forbes column (“Ukraine, Taiwan Challenges Spur Efforts To Strengthen Munitions Industrial Base“) to America’s dwindling stockpiles:
The dual stresses of conflict in Ukraine and potential conflict in Taiwan have forced a wholesale reevaluation of how the U.S. government purchases munitions and other materiel, with an eye to accelerating every facet of the process.
The urgency of military needs has merged with the Biden administration’s efforts to craft a national industrial policy, and the bureaucratic result is akin to when frozen regions begin to thaw with the coming of spring.
This causes Dave Schuler to wonder,
At this point the U. S. isn’t able to supply arms to Ukraine at the pace at which the country needs them. Will we able to supply both Taiwan and Ukraine at the same time?
One presumes that’s rhetorical, since we’re barely keeping up with the demands in Ukraine. And, in a follow-up column (“Urgent Military Need For ‘Affordable Mass’ Can’t Wait For A New Generation Of Smart Munitions“), Thompson declares, “Some experts believe that the current stock of long-range, precision-guided munitions would run low within weeks after a war with China commenced.” So, we’re currently not able to do either at a sufficient pace, let alone both simultaneously.
After showing that the United States is devoting more aid to Ukraine than all of our European allies and partners combined, Dave concludes,
Here’s a question the significance of which shouldn’t be lost on any of the interested parties: given a choice between Ukraine and Taiwan, which is our higher priority? I think it’s Taiwan.
I agree but think it’s a false choice, at least at present.
Our National Defense Strategy, the unclassified summary of which was released last October, declared that we are “prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific, then the Russia challenge in Europe,” followed by an array of “persistent threats” (Iran, North Korea, violent extremist organizations, global climate change, etc.). This is in line with the previous administration’s strategy and builds on the “Asia pivot” by the Obama administration a dozen years ago.
At the same time, while we see “the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department,” we also recognize that “Russia poses acute threats, as illustrated by its brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
So, given that Russia has already invaded Ukraine while China has yet to give any indication that a Taiwan invasion is imminent, it stands to reason that the acute threat will get the temporal priority over the pacing challenge. All of our planning and acquisitions efforts for the future fight are based on China because they’re vastly wealthier and more capable than Russia. But there’s a fight right now in Ukraine and the Biden administration has, rightly in my view, judged that it’s in our moral and strategic interests to arm Ukraine and render Russia a less acute threat.
Now, of course, Dave’s implication that China could exploit the situation by pushing up the timeline of a Taiwan invasion is surely right. Presumably, the intelligence community has judged that risk low enough to justify our Ukraine policy but, hey, they’ve been wrong before.
Where Dave and I are very much in agreement, though, is that, if we’re going to be a global superpower prepared to project power around the world, we need to upgrade our industrial base and vastly increase our stockpiles. As the two Thompson columns linked above suggest, that’s one area in which there’s actually significant bipartisan consensus and momentum for action.
