4 Ways U.S. Support for Ukraine Helps Defend Taiwan

In the U.S. political debate, an often-heard criticism of military assistance to Ukraine is that it takes up resources needed against a far more dangerous threat: China. These critics argue that funding, arms, and other efforts to support Ukraine and deter Russian aggression in Europe should instead be oriented toward the Pacific and the far more potent threat of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Ukraine’s victory, they say, will be pyrrhic, since the support required to achieve it will undercut similar efforts to support Taiwan. Especially at a time when U.S. defense industrial capacity is at a century-long low, U.S. support for Ukraine may feel morally right, but will ultimately prove deadly to stopping China in its tracks.

The critics are wrong. Rather than distracting from Pacific security and the defense of Taiwan, aid to Ukraine is enabling it. The disastrous military performance of Beijing’s most important ally in Ukraine is a major geopolitical setback for China. Ukraine’s successful, Western-supported defense of its territory could have a significant deterrent effect on China’s own plans to forcibly unite with Taiwan. As the downing of Russian hypersonic missiles by a U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system demonstrates, the United States is also learning valuable lessons from Russia’s and Ukraine’s performance in a large-scale, nation-on-nation war, following two decades in which the U.S. military was focused almost entirely on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions.

Already, measures taken to support Ukraine are helping modernize U.S. forces, revive dormant defense production, develop and accelerate processes for building and fielding weapons, and spur the largest defense buildup by the United States and its allies in 40 years. All these benefits to the United States come without the use of U.S. troops.

Although much more needs to be done, here are four ways that arming Ukraine has materially improved the ability to deter or defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

First, the war has prompted the United States and its Asian allies to significantly increase military spending. Although U.S. President Joe Biden sought a de-facto cut (measured after inflation) to defense spending in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the U.S. Congress instead increased it by more than $25 billion in 2022 and $45 billion in 2023. That’s in addition to the $44 billion in defense aid to Ukraine—money that is being spent on the U.S. military, as Ukraine aid mainly comes from existing stocks of mostly older weapons. Congress also finally ended the practice of linking defense with nondefense spending levels, enacting an after-inflation increase to the military budget and an after-inflation cut to everything else. Congress has already made clear that Biden’s 2024 defense budget request of $886 billion will also be supersized.

Western support for Ukraine has also catalyzed front-line Asian allies to significantly boost their own defense budgets, even as some of them, too, support Ukraine. In June, explicitly citing Russia’s war against Ukraine, Japan announced a plan to double military spending within five years. To that end, Tokyo subsequently enacted a 20 percent increase in 2023, including for the purchase of U.S.-made long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. Taiwan’s defense budget has increased by 80 percent since 2019—of which two-thirds has come since the start of Russia’s invasion. According to people directly involved, U.S. planners and trainers are collaborating with Taiwan on the lessons it can learn from the fighting in Ukraine, which has already changed Taiwan’s thinking about how to defend itself. South Korea is following a similar path: In January, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense announced that its budget will grow by almost 7 percent annually over the next five years. Similarly, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’s first defense budget proposal calls for an 8 percent increase in defense spending in 2023, with spending expected to maintain an average annual growth rate of more than 6 percent through 2028. In Australia, the new government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already boosted defense spending by more than 7 percent.

Second, the war has pushed the United States to grow and modernize its own forces. The U.S. Army has used Ukraine supplemental funds, equal to one-third of its annual procurement budget, to buy seven more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (known as HIMARS) in fiscal 2025 than previously budgeted. These long-range artillery systems have proven critical to Ukraine and may also be useful in a Taiwan scenario. Similarly, the Army is now planning to purchase 197 Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles instead of the 91 units originally planned for 2024, backfilling the 1960s-era M113 armored personnel carriers sent to Ukraine. Production lines for the key munitions used in Ukraine—HIMARS, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), and Stinger and Javelin missiles—are slated to nearly double or more than double their production capacity in the next two years. Production of 155 mm artillery shells is slated to increase sixfold over the next four years. The American taxpayer is also getting a better deal: These multiyear procurements allow the per-unit cost of HIMARS and GMLRS to drop 6 percent and 11 percent, respectively, even at a time when inflation is at 5 percent. Ukraine aid is driving down costs and accelerating purchases, leading to a larger, more modern, and better suited force.

Third, Ukraine aid has jolted the U.S. defense industrial base after three decades of atrophy due to military restraint. The dire state of the U.S. defense sector has been documented by report after report. Aid to Ukraine did not create this long-existing problem, but is instead catalyzing serious movement. Production lines have reopened for Stinger missiles, 155 mm artillery shells, and GMLRS. U.S. and European defense companies are working to set up additional production lines on both continents. While the discussion about expanding the capacity of the defense industrial base by issuing multiyear contracts originally centered on backfilling munitions transferred to Ukraine, these approaches have now been applied to other programs unrelated to Ukraine, such as the SM-6 WHAT, Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin has opened a second production line for the LRASM and JASSM air-to-surface variant, which will allow it to double annual production in 2024. The U.S. Defense Department recently set up the Joint Production Accelerator Cell, a process to identify supply chain restrictions across the United States and restore defense manufacturing competency. It also inaugurated the Undefinitized Contract Action, an accelerated contracting process that allows the Pentagon to contract and receive delivery before all terms and prices are made final, which it has already used to purchase GMLRs and Stingers. None of these ideas are new, but Ukraine aid is removing bureaucratic impediments and stimulating production in a way that has not been seen in decades. As the Pentagon’s head of acquisition and sustainment said in October: “Production is deterrence.” If Beijing believes that the United States can sustain a long military engagement, it is more likely to be deterred from an attack.

Fourth, the Biden administration’s unprecedented use of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to send weapons to Ukraine has been extended to Taiwan. This tool, originally passed by Congress in 1961, gives the president the power to provide military equipment, services, and training to foreign countries from existing U.S. stocks. After Russia attacked Ukraine, Congress gave the administration the ability to transfer $11 billion worth of weapons through September 2022, and then increased the authority to another $14.5 billion over the next year. Biden has used PDA 37 times since the war began. This strategy means the Pentagon can move weapons to Ukraine with great speed—without using purchase orders that would take years—and use the money to backfill deliveries, buying new, better, different, or more articles than those that were sent. (That also means that the value of what the United States actually sends to Ukraine is less than the PDA numbers imply—a point most critics of Ukraine aid conveniently ignore.) Contracts to replenish stocks have already been signed, and Congress is appropriating more money for replenishment than the value of what is being sent to Ukraine. After Congress approved a PDA for Taiwan worth up to $1 billion per year, the Pentagon announced a first $500 million arms package for Taiwan. A tool Congress first refashioned for use for Ukraine is now helping provide material support to Taiwan. Enabling PDA for Taiwan would not have been possible without the political coalition created on Capitol Hill on behalf of Ukraine.

The United States is still not moving fast enough to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, but U.S. military aid to Ukraine is helping it get off the blocks. From modernizing its own forces faster and revving up defense industrial production to spurring defense budget increases and getting weapons to Taiwan more quickly, aid to Ukraine has been a catalyst like no other since World War II. As a result, the United States is finally beginning to take the military side of the China challenge more seriously. As Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet recently told the Wall Street Journal: “We want to get the fragility out of the system, so if this ever happens again, it’s six months instead of three years to get a meaningful improvement in capacity.”

Biden’s policies could still lead to the worst of both worlds. Slow, insufficient, and inadequate aid to Ukraine will neither defeat Russia nor generate enough of a slipstream to aid Taiwan. As long as Biden and the U.S. Congress are unwilling to rapidly scale up arms deliveries to Taiwan and increase the U.S. defense budget to Cold War levels, supporting larger and faster aid to Ukraine is currently the best thing the United States can do to preserve peace and stability in Asia.