By launching a full-scale war on Iran instead of a more limited attritional campaign against its nuclear program, President Donald Trump has badly weakened America’s ability to resist a future Chinese attack on Taiwan.
It’s the air defense munitions, stupid.
Weeks prior to the war, I warned that “defending against [Iranian missile] attacks would mean degrading already greatly reduced THAAD ballistic missile and Patriot missile defense munition stocks. This isn’t good. In any war with China over Taiwan, China would throw thousands of far more advanced and independently targeted missiles against U.S. military bases on Guam and Okinawa.” Many on the right ignored these concerns. Others excused these risks by suggesting that the Pentagon simply replicate its rapid development of a new air-to-ground munition in the air defense space. It was a weak argument. As I noted, “it’s far easier to develop and surge build a weapon designed to hit static ground targets than it is to develop and surge build a weapon that intercepts extremely fast-moving air targets, some of which have extensive countermeasures.”
The bill is in.
A new Center for Strategic and International Studies report estimates that more than half of all THAAD interceptors and approaching half of all Patriot interceptors have now been depleted in this war. CSIS also estimates that approximately 25% of the SM-6 missile stock and 50% of SM-3 missile stock are gone. The challenge extends to exquisite stand-off ground attack munitions. The military has used more than 25% of its Tomahawks and around 25% JASSM ground attack weapons. The expenditure of JASSM stocks is particularly concerning in that these weapons are designed for penetrating long-range stealth strikes deep inside Chinese air defense umbrellas.
This is a big problem.
While Iran’s nuclear program posed a serious threat to U.S. national security interests, the successful conquest of Taiwan by China poses an existential threat to U.S. interests. In such a war, China would throw thousands of missiles of far greater capability than those of Iran at American warships and bases on Guam and Okinawa (and hopefully, assuming Manila’s agreement, bases on the Philippines). If the U.S. were unable to intercept the most threatening of these missiles, it would mean air and naval bases becoming non-operational, the fleet being held at increasing, operationally ineffective range from China, and the means of effective U.S. resistance being choked out.
Another problem?
If the U.S. now engages in a massive push to boost production of these depleted weapons, it will very likely take at least three years to get output to minimally acceptable levels. And even then, this is a best-case scenario for minimally acceptable output. After all, these stocks were already poor prior to the war. In 2024, commander of U.S. Pacific forces Adm. Sam Paparo warned that degrading air defense stocks “inherently impose costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because [China] is the most capable potential adversary in the world. … It’s a time for straight talk.”
The U.S. is tempting Chinese Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping here. Xi views the establishment of CCP control over Taiwan as the key question of his and the Party’s destiny. He has told his People’s Liberation Army to be ready to conquer Taiwan by 2027. The chaos born of PLA leadership purges notwithstanding, many military analysts believe China’s supreme leader will order military action by 2030. And while it is near certain that U.S. air defense munition stocks will not be at acceptable levels by 2030, the costs of U.S. defeat in a Taiwan war would be catastrophic.
Yes, Taiwan’s investment in its own defense remains ludicrously inadequate. Still, China’s successful seizure of Taiwan would result in the effective dislocation of the U.S. from the Western Pacific. It would mean China controlling multitrillion-dollar annual value trade routes, and Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor infrastructure/human capital (though the U.S. could destroy some of the infrastructure). China would use its control of Taiwan to extract political and economic obedience from Pacific nations. It would mean the de facto subjugation of America’s treaty allies in Australia, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines to Beijing as they desperately struggled to keep Beijing happy and thus allow their trade to continue unmolested. It would also present Beijing as the dominant global power. This would hemorrhage economic and political power away from the U.S. and in favor of CCP hegemony. The result would be a world that was less free and an America that was less powerful and prosperous.
ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE ON IRAN AND CHINA IS SHAPING TRUMP’S STRATEGY
As I put it two days before the war began, “SM-class, Patriot, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile interceptors don’t grow on trees.”
Let’s just hope China doesn’t shake the Taiwan tree anytime soon.