From Ukraine to Taiwan, the US has committed to supporting its partners in a struggle against much larger foes. But in the op-ed below, the Cato Institute’s Eric Gomez argues that when it comes to the provision of arms, the time is coming, sooner than the Pentagon may think, when the US will be forced to prioritize one over the other.
As lawmakers in Washington appear at least a little closer to authorizing new military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, the questions over whether the US industrial base has the capacity to meet the global demand for American arms have only grown louder.
Even prior to the war in Gaza, the US was beginning to experience a weapons overlap between platforms destined for Kyiv and those destined for Taipei. If Congress approves Biden’s request for additional Ukraine aid, the tradeoff between arming Ukraine and Taiwan will become more important in 2024 and beyond.
Discussion around the tradeoffs between arming Ukraine and Taiwan have coalesced around two schools of thought. There are the optimists, including senior US and Taiwanese officials, downplay the overlap between Ukraine and Taiwan, and argue that more support for the former does not negatively impact the latter. Then there are the pessimists contend that continued support for Ukraine could worsen a large backlog of US weapons earmarked for Taiwan. Pessimists further argue that arming Taiwan is the greater strategic imperative.
I am a pessimist and believe that if not now, soon enough the US will have to make hard choices about how best to support two beleaguered friends with finite resources. It should, for one, consider freezing new foreign military sales to European allies in order to European industry to take on more of the burden while the US focuses on Taiwan.
