The United States is simultaneously entangled in escalated conflicts in all three security fronts—Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific—and the nexus of foreign adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—is coming together like never before.
Russia and China have significantly increased their military spending to be on a war footing. They announced their “no limits” partnership shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and reaffirmed it in May.
Have the two regional wars and the associated emergencies distracted the United States from its priority in the Indo-Pacific? U.S. government officials say “no.”
“We have not taken our eye off the ball when it comes to our efforts and our focus on the Indo-Pacific and the Asia region broadly,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in response to an Epoch Times question on May 30. He pointed to the U.S.-Japan-South Korea and U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral summits, as well as diplomatic talks with China.
“Despite these historic clashes in Europe and the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific has remained our priority theater of operations,” he said.
But security analysts are not so convinced.
Amy Mitchell, a founding partner at geopolitical consultancy Kilo Alpha Strategies, noted the administration’s strategy on all three continents is currently that of containment instead of deterrence, essentially treating each as a separate silo. Ms. Mitchell previously held senior positions at the Defense and State Departments.
The United States, she said, needs to adapt to the changed landscape in which adversaries are aligning across regions, under the premise that any change could spill over and spread at any time.
“An unwillingness to recognize how our adversaries are reorganizing and working together only courts disaster for the U.S.,” she told The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, the U.S. defense industry is strained from replenishing stockpiles diminished by Ukraine, producing weapons for Ukraine, and catching up with a Taiwan arms sales backlog, according to Eric Gomez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He estimates the backlog to Taiwan sits at $20 billion, the same as the island’s annual defense budget.
In the $95 billion foreign aid package President Joe Biden signed in April, the United States provides for $14 billion of military assistance to Ukraine, $16 billion for Israel, and $2 billion for Taiwan.
Ms. Mitchell welcomed the effort in ramping up production but said, “The question will become—is it too little, too late? Is the U.S. defense industry prepared to ramp up as quickly as it did in World War II? And perhaps most importantly, will the timelines match?”
Arming Taiwan Takes Back Seat
Ensuring that Taiwan has adequate weapons and munition stockpiles is essential for the island’s self defense during the initial moments of a Chinese invasion, before help arrives.Yet, with urgent demands from Ukraine and Israel, the United States hasn’t been able to address its arms sales backlog to Taiwan based on orders since 2019.
Ukraine and Taiwan have been largely obtaining weapons and munitions through separate channels, but their weapons and munitions needs overlap greatly. Israel needs weapons, too. But the scale of the Ukraine war makes a much larger impact.
Alex Velez-Green, a senior policy advisor at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, said the administration’s original strategy was to help Ukraine by using U.S. stockpiles, which would buy time to produce new ones for Taiwan under foreign military sales.
“But the problem is that that only works if you’re able to wrap things up in Ukraine quickly, and you have enough time to produce these new weapons and get them to Taiwan,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Unfortunately, Ukraine has become a protracted war; it is unlikely to end anytime soon. And a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could occur really at any point—we’re in a period of time now where it’s plausible that Beijing might pull the trigger. And it only increases with the months that go by.”
Russia has allocated about a third of its 2024 government spending to defense, showing signs that it’s settling into a long war in Ukraine. Mr. Velez-Green describes the Russia–Ukraine war as “a war of industrial scale” because “Russia has mobilized the economy into a war footing as it ramps up defense production.”
He said the current administration should be prepared to “accept risks in Ukraine” since it has emphasized the Indo-Pacific region as the most critical national security theater.
That doesn’t mean stopping support for Ukraine, he said, but the United States needs to “rely more on our NATO allies in the Ukraine context.”
Since December 2021, the United States has announced about $28 billion of Ukraine aid through presidential drawdown and $19 billion through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. An additional $13.8 billion under the assistance initiative was included in the foreign aid package President Biden signed in April.
The assistance program authorizes funding for newly U.S.-manufactured weapons and those acquired in the global market to be sent to Ukraine. The White House is trying to get Congress’s support to create a similar initiative for Taiwan.
Many of the weapons given to Ukraine are on Taiwan’s arms sales backlog: F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks, and Harpoon anti-ship coastal defense systems and missiles. The backlogs are $8 billion, $2 billion, and $2.5 billion, respectively.
According to Mr. Gomez, if there are no further delays, more than half of the backlog—including the F-16 fighter jets, drones, HIMARs, and tanks—will be delivered to Taiwan by the end of 2026.
Mr. Velez-Green is not optimistic that the weapons and munitions will be available to Taiwan quickly enough.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say we have until 2027 to get this right,” he said, predicting that China may invade Taiwan before 2027. In addition, enabling the Taiwan military to be combat-ready with those weapons will take time beyond just delivering the items.
However, according to Mr. Gomez, having access to the presidential drawdown doesn’t guarantee Taiwan’s problem is solved. He said the presidential drawdown authority allows access to U.S. stocks, which could contain different types of weapons than what Taiwan needs: Taiwan mainly needs short-range weapons. And that stock is low after supporting Ukraine for more than two years.
Meanwhile, the U.S. defense industry faces its own challenges amid simultaneous demands from multiple wars and military conflicts.
In May, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Christopher W. Grady said that the U.S. defense industrial base had shrunk over the years and transitioned to a just-in-time mode that doesn’t maintain a lot of inventory. At the same time, weapons systems have become much more complicated and take longer to produce.
He said the Defense Department will need to involve its contractors early and decide whether to withdraw from U.S. stockpiles or use new production to fulfill military needs.
Ms. Mitchell said China’s monopoly on critical minerals might further dent the United States’ ability to manufacture military supplies quickly.
The main challenge, she said, “will be getting supplies, munitions, and food to Taiwan.”
“That will be the issue because we have to go across the ocean. China does not.”
Taiwan sits about 120 miles off the coast of southeastern China. Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands are located only about six miles off the Chinese mainland.
Mounting Pressure from China
Unlike the United States, China doesn’t have a global military presence. That allows the mainland to focus its defense resources on Taiwan.
Calling China’s defense budget “opaque,” Mr. Aquilino, then-U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, said in April he didn’t believe the 7.2 percent figure represented the actual growth rate.
“So they’ve made that calculus; they’ve made that conscious choice, despite 30 percent of the economy bottoming out of [China] to maintain their investment in military capability. That’s concerning to me,” he said at a Council on Foreign Relations event. He was referring to China’s debt-fueled infrastructure and housing markets taking a significant share of the nation’s GDP.
At his inauguration on May 20, new Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, a candidate the Chinese Communist Party didn’t favor, said Taiwan would “neither yield nor provoke, and maintain the status quo” in its relations with the mainland. He said Taiwan and mainland China “are not subordinate to each other.”
Days later, on May 23 and 24, the Chinese regime’s military conducted a drill surrounding Taiwan. It said the action was “a strong punishment for the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan independence’ forces.”
Yujen Kuo, a vice president at the Institute for National Policy Research, a leading think tank in Taiwan, agrees. He calls the drills “military mobilization for specific purposes.”
After an August 2022 drill, which immediately followed then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, China has kept four naval vessels surrounding Taiwan.
“People believe the drills were finished [in a few days]. But it did not in reality. So that’s the style of China trying to play along in the name of military exercise,” Mr. Kuo told The Epoch Times, referring to the Chinese regime’s tactic of stretching boundaries under programs with inoculate names.
China has been using gray zone tactics—coercive actions in the space between peace and war—near Taiwan. The Chinese regime, which illegally claims almost the entirety of the contested waterway, has built a network of artificial islands with military installations in the region. Chinese vessels have taken increasingly aggressive actions toward ships from neighboring countries, particularly the Philippines.
These tactics are “very dangerous,” Mr. Kuo said.
“Those gray zone tactics actually provide experiences and opportunities to train their fighters, their cargoes, their naval soldiers at all those locations that might spark real battles.”
Mr. Kuo and Liang-chih Evans Chen, an associate research fellow at Taiwan’s official Institute for National Security and Defense Research, said it has been a positive sign that the U.S. government, starting with the Trump administration, elevated the Taiwan issue as a critical international security issue.
“If Taiwan falls, the first island chain will have a big hole right in the middle, implying that the U.S. has to retreat to the second island chain,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Chen said many Taiwanese elites are concerned about the arms sales backlog as they know Taiwan needs to stockpile military supplies, food, and energy to sustain the initial attack from China.
A month before his retirement, Mr. Aquilino said “there is no other powers that can coordinate and synchronize global operations in all domains with our allies and partners like the United States—undersea, on the sea, above the sea, in space and cyberspace, across the globe, instantaneously. No other nation can do it.”
In response to Epoch Times’ inquiry, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command spokesperson Capt. Matthew Comer said in an emailed statement, “Though other conflicts may increase the demand for precision weapons and munitions inventory, the difference in the problem sets has not impacted the force capabilities that enable our ability to deter or prevail in major combat in the Pacific.”
The U.S. Department of Defense didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
“I told Mr. Dong that if he calls me on an urgent matter, I will answer the phone, and I certainly hope that he’ll do the same,” Mr. Austin said. “And it’s that communication that I think will help to keep things in the right place and help us move things towards a greater stability and security in the region.”
Mr. Kuo said the United States has been largely resorting to diplomatic channels to address China’s gray zone tactics, fearing that addressing the issue head-on would escalate conflicts in the region. He sees that as, in essence, leaving Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines to fend for themselves against China’s aggressions.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea because when the PLA gets more familiar with the air and the sea surrounding the U.S. deployments, that will provide them a better battlefield advantage over the U.S. forces,” he said.
Mr. Kuo suggested the United States play a more central role in coordinating concerted actions to counter China’s gray zone tactics, saying not doing so shows that the United States lacks battlefield awareness, or alertness.
“It is dangerous because not enough battlefield awareness will lead to a failed deterrence against China because the U.S. is not sending a clear and strong enough message to Beijing: ‘We know what you’ve been doing,’” he said.
