We may be on the verge of peace in Ukraine — or not. Either way, the United States will need to continue providing Kyiv weapons. That’s because, despite significant progress, Europe still lacks the military-industrial might to replace the United States and meet Ukraine’s and NATO’s deterrent requirements.
A failure to arm Ukraine will increase the chances that the Kremlin will come back for even more Ukrainian territory in the future. The good news is that the United States can afford to provide Ukraine security assistance and has the means to do so without materially delaying the provision of weapons to Taiwan.
This assertion may surprise some, but consider some facts.
The United States has provided about $67 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Feb 24, 2022, when Putin launched his massive, unprovoked re-invasion. That may sound like an enormous sum, but it actually equates to less than 3 percent of what Washington spent on the Pentagon over the same time period.
And what did Americans get for that relatively modest investment?
U.S. aid has helped Ukraine destroy over 10,500 tanks and other armored vehicles, over 270 aircraft, and a significant portion of the Russian Black Sea fleet. These losses, which will take Russia many years to replace, decrease Putin’s ability to launch further acts of aggression, both against Ukraine and America’s NATO allies.
In short, thanks to Ukrainian bravery and sacrifice — and American weapons — Russia is even weaker relative to the United States and may be less eager and certainly less able to launch future aggression.
That sustainable level of U.S. support for Ukraine has also sent a valuable deterrent message to adversaries elsewhere contemplating additional aggression, including to the Kremlin’s authoritarian “no limit” partner in Beijing, which is considering whether it should try to conquer the free people of Taiwan.
If the United States does not have the political will to provide Ukraine the means of self-defense without putting any U.S. service members in harm’s way, Beijing is likely to conclude Washington will not send Americans to fight in the Taiwan Strait, thereby making Beijing’s aggression more likely.
But does the United States have the industrial capacity to simultaneously arm Ukraine and Taiwan? Or must it choose between them?
We examined 15 major weapons systems and munitions committed to both Ukraine and Taiwan and found that their provision to Kyiv did not delay the delivery of any of them to Taipei by more than a year.
Why is that?
First, the two U.S. partners have somewhat different needs due to their geography and the nature of their actual or potential conflicts.
Second, where there is overlap, the respective production lines are often healthy and/or expanding. For example, the production of Javelin missiles, which the Trump administration provided to Ukraine after the Obama administration refused to do so, is set to double over the next few years.
Third, in several cases, such as TOW missiles, the United States possesses a large inventory or stockpile of the relevant system, which enables its rapid provision to partners from U.S. inventories.
Fourth, most of the weapons Taipei seeks from the United States are being acquired through contracts for new systems, such as the AIM-120C-8 air-to-air missile. By contrast, most of the weapons sent to Kyiv have been older systems already fielded by the U.S. military.
When a neighbor’s home has been stormed by a serial home invader, it is smart to support your neighbor and oppose the intruder. Otherwise, one should expect more home invasions in the future — some of which may be much more costly.
Thankfully, the United States can afford to provide Ukrainians the weapons they need to defend their homes against invading Russian forces, and doing so need not come at the expense of deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Perhaps that is why Taiwan has urged support for Ukraine.
Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ryan Brobst is a senior research analyst.
