Prioritizing Taiwan has Tradeoffs

There is an ongoing set of arguments that those of us who support ongoing assistance to Ukraine are somehow failing to account for the tradeoffs this entails vis a vis Taiwan.

Prioritizing Taiwan over Ukraine is a major push by the Trumpist right at the moment. I’m using the term “Trumpist" not out of disdain, but more because I’m not sure of a better descriptor for the set of people making this argument. Given that it ranges from Eldbridge Colby to Tucker Carlson, it’s really hard to pin it down with an ideology, but the folks making it are all either supportive of Trump or were supportive of his administration, making the term as accurate as any other.

As I’ve noted, this is argued by people in measured tones and more outlandish voices; in all cases, the argument is the same. The United States does not have the equipment, the industrial base, or the personnel to support Ukraine at its current level and to prevent China from seizing Taiwan. Given that China, not Russia, is a real threat to the geopolitical order, we should therefore prioritize the defense of Taiwan and reduce support for Ukraine. This is a reasonable argument to make, but as laid out, it is ultimately not compelling. There are a few reasons for this - first, as this substack has previously argued, Taiwan is not the be-all and end-all of US-China great power competition. Second, most of these arguments are extremely vague about what “prioritizing” means and fail to offer concrete suggestions for what type of aid would be too much versus too little, making it ultimately difficult to ascertain what types of trade-offs Taiwan advocates actually seek to make. Lastly, these arguments almost always hand-wave away the implications for Ukraine in these scenarios, which, again, seems to make it difficult to ascertain what the actual cost/benefits of their proposals are.

This piece by Eldbridge Colby is, I think a good example of exactly the sort of argument I’m thinking of - it rightfully centers China as the long-term threat, it notes the major challenges we face in preventing China from seizing Taiwan, and then dictates that we should just hand off leadership supporting Ukraine to Germany and the EU - whatever that means - and everything will be fine. It’s entirely possible to agree with points one and two and find the solution on offer incredibly unconvincing.

Colby’s arguments around US capabilities hinge on the idea that there is a zero-sum trade-off between aid to Ukraine and our ability to protect Taiwan. Because of our limited military-industrial base and our national debt, we have limited resources and have to choose between the two. This misunderstands the nature of a defense industrial base - by nature, it is responsive to demand signals, and the United States, while it has limitations relative to its Cold War industrial activity, has considerable runway to ramp up its defense industry. Defense spending has risen over the past five years and rose again in Fiscal Year 2022 (due to a combination of increased base spending and Ukraine toplines). Thus the efforts to bolster HIMARS, Javelin, Stinger, and other missile system production lines for Ukraine will create greater mobilization capacity for a response to any movement on Taiwan. It is true that existing inventory is a zero-sum game and we should be careful about how much material we send to Ukraine relative to wargamed stockpiles, but the broader capability is not, and, indeed, the response to Ukraine has helped to create real improvements in what had been a largely known but unaddressed vulnerability.

Also, regarding the national debt, it’s worth noting that the biggest drivers of our current debt levels are a variety of tax cuts that have reduced revenue far below previous forecasts. It’s entirely possible to create a fiscal structure that allows a defense build-up if we’re willing to return to tax levels broadly similar to what existed during the Clinton administration.

Moving on, the broader issue with the piece, and these arguments writ large, is that there’s no attempt to accept that significantly curtailing US support for Ukraine at this time would have major downsides. First, the idea that Germany and the rest of the EU could step in in a timely manner to sustain Ukraine is lunacy. Germany, despite its much-ballyhooed “zeitenwende” and announcements around increased spending, remains a defense basket case, incapable of equipping its own forces, much less Ukraines. There are other nations in the EU that have more capability, but almost certainly not enough to sustain anything like what Ukraine needs to maintain its current position. Thus any major curtailing of US aid would almost certainly allow Russia to force Ukraine into a severely restrictive peace deal, obviating the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainians and bolstering Putin’s regime.

Second, the US moving into a posture of providing limited support to Ukraine (again, rare is it that limits are actually provided) has real risks in terms of maintaining the diplomatic coalition that we want to take with us into any future stand-off with China. As evidenced by recent moves by the Netherlands to support embargoing crucial semiconductor technology, there are real positives to maintaining the support of our European allies. While their ability to actually contribute to any fight over Taiwan is almost certainly extremely limited, this will be a long-term confrontation and we will want to keep them onside.

Lastly, there are any number of nations that are likely to seek to avoid committing to either side in the ongoing US/China faceoff. They will certainly be watching what happens in Ukraine and trying to take the measure of the US and its commitment. While there are clear limitations to measuring the influence of perceived resolve on foreign relations, it’s worth considering as a potential downside when making policy decisions.

Overall, the position of the Trumpist right doesn’t really adequately attempt to grapple with the complexities and tradeoffs of shifting our focus from Ukraine to Taiwan. It’s unfortunate as the overall argument vis-a-vis the importance of Taiwan and China is on strong ground. Rather than stridently arguing for vaguely defined “prioritization” of Taiwan, it would be better to see clearly defined proposals around what the balance is to strike between supporting Ukraine and maintaining the stockpiles we think are essential to defend Taiwan. While some of this debate must necessarily be oblique, recent announcements make clear that the current administration is trying to strike a reasonable balance. And it is a balance. There are trade-offs and complexity no matter what side we choose to prioritize. If we want to keep Ukraine’s position viable and if we want to maintain our European allies’ support, we cannot make massive shifts in our posture vis-a-vis Ukraine in the immediate term. Debating and discussing this balance is a useful policy debate, but simply identifying China as the primary national security threat does not add anything to the debate.