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Amid escalating Chinese threats to seize Taiwan, the U.S. military requires rapid rearmament. That means a bigger defense budget, but also increased Taiwanese defense spending, much boosted munitions stocks, more Pacific military bases, and larger Navy fleets.
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Meeting these challenges will be difficult enough. But two further problems stand in the way of progress. First, even if defense spending increases significantly and the War Department prioritizes these specific concerns, which is far from certain, it will take significant time to fix these flaws. Second, the war with Iran has transformed a serious air defense munitions deficit into a crisis.
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True, President Donald Trump deserves credit for neutering Iran’s nuclear program, which posed a major threat to U.S. allies and global stability. Still, Trump’s launching of a war focused on regime change was foolish from the start. It denied the regime’s domestic monopoly of coercive power. It also ignored the obvious, now born out, risks of degrading U.S. deterrence of a future Chinese attack on Taiwan. For economic and strategic reasons, Taiwan’s status is far more consequential to U.S. interests than the status of the Iranian regime.
Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping views Taiwan’s subjugation as the key near-medium-term test of both his and the CCP’s 21st-century destiny. He knows that it would establish China’s hegemony in the Pacific. By Beijing’s ensuing control over the multitrillion-dollar East and South China Sea trade routes, it could demand political obedience from regional states, including key U.S. allies such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia.
Other losses would abound. Absent U.S. military action to destroy them before they could be captured by Chinese forces, Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor chip manufacturers would fall into China’s hands. Those manufacturers are crucial to the global economy. Xi’s victory would also shift international perceptions of the United States toward that of a declining power, encouraging nations to align with the CCP instead. This would be a disaster for the U.S. economy, for the sovereignty of nations, and for human freedom. Moreover, Xi’s purge of military leadership means that he would face little to no resistance if he ordered an attack on Taiwan. He has told his military to be ready to do so by 2027.
All of this leads to one major demand of U.S. rearmament: ensuring that Taiwan dramatically increases defense spending. But while President William Lai understands this necessity, Taiwan’s dovish opposition party, the KMT, recently rejected Lai’s latest defense plan. The problem? If Taiwan is unwilling to take its own defense seriously, it will be politically impossible for the U.S. to come to Taiwan’s rescue.
Then there’s the munition shortage.
Unfortunately, too many conservative commentators and Washington think tanks play down the Iran war’s indirect but grave damage to U.S. readiness for a China war. Too many continue to pretend that munitions were exaggerated. Or that this malady can be ameliorated simply by calling for faster rearmament. And somehow expecting it to happen. These arguments were and remain disingenuous. Ultimately, those who supported a regime-change-focused Iran war should have stated that they believed it was worth the known costs it would impose on China war readiness.
Most notably, costs via the Iran war’s depletion of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptors. To a lesser but nonetheless concerning degree, the Navy has also depleted its SM-class naval interceptor munitions. Yet, although the Trump administration is now rushing to boost the production rates, a systemic shortage of factory space, skilled labor, and complex spare parts means that stocks of these weapons will not reach minimally satisfactory levels before late 2029. And that’s being very optimistic. This is not a problem that can be resolved by more money alone.
The wartime importance of these weapons cannot be overstated.
Land attack weapons, including long-range anti-ship missiles and joint air-to-surface standoff missiles, would be critical to enabling U.S. aircraft to strike high-value targets such as Chinese military command centers and the Chinese navy’s superb Type-055 cruisers. These forces operate under expansive and advanced air defense umbrellas. Air defense munitions would also be crucial to defending U.S. air and naval bases on Guam, Okinawa, and at Yokosuka. And any bases in the Philippines. Which speaks to another concern.
Namely, that the U.S. will need as many distributed bases near Taiwan as feasible. That’s because some, perhaps many, of these bases will be rendered inoperable in the early stages of war. Sustaining combat operations will thus require a high degree of redundancy. For this reason, the Trump administration must prioritize agreements with South Korea and the Philippines toward maximizing U.S. freedom of action from their territories during war — Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has made it very likely that Japan would participate in any defense of Taiwan. This is one rare area in which the Biden administration did a good job vis-à-vis China.
Redundancy matters. The Chinese military has a vast range of ballistic and hypersonic missiles that are far more capable than those Iran has employed. China would litter U.S. bases and warships with these weapons. And as proven by recent military exercises, China is rapidly improving its ability to threaten U.S. forces far out into the Pacific Ocean. Intercepting at least some of these weapons will be a prerequisite if U.S. aircraft and warships are to deploy, return, rearm, and redeploy.
That speaks to the final concern: warships.
The overstretch of U.S. aircraft carrier forces in the Iran war has led to the Navy’s only Pacific-based carrier now being deployed to the Middle East. But the Navy has a deficit of warships of all types. The commander of U.S. Pacific Forces has repeatedly emphasized his concern over a lack of attack submarines, a rare area where the U.S. retains a clear advantage over China. Complicating matters further, Trump’s plan for a new class of battleships will make these problems worse, not better. The ships are too big, vulnerable, and cost-firepower-inefficient when measured against the Navy cruisers they would replace. They will also worsen the Navy’s already severely delayed shipbuilding schedule.
America has too few naval shipyards. Poor defense contractor management, weak Navy oversight, constant Navy demands for ship redesigns, and skilled labor shortages have led to longer, more expensive warship construction. New shipyards and recruitment can address this problem over time, but not quickly enough for Pacific Command. In turn, the Navy needs to start building ships abroad. South Korea offers the most obvious option here, with its pedigree in cost-effective construction of highly capable warships, such as the Sejong the Great-class guided missile destroyers. The Trump administration should bolster its recent laudable efforts to allow for this.
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The top line remains the same, however. Effective rearmament demands much more than repeated calls for increased defense spending. The U.S. military is suffering from a grave lack of readiness in the face of the most crucial strategic test of 21st-century security.
Urgent honesty about how to fix things is the minimum required from any serious commentator.
