The United States has committed billions upon billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine to help fight Russia, however the gargantuan spending spree has come at the price of crucial military funding intended for Taiwan in order to help it defend its borders from a likely Chinese invasion in the coming years.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the backlog of military aid to Taiwan has increased by more than $4 billion since the United States began its campaign to boost Ukraine’s struggling military in February.
The Russian war with Ukraine has already sparked suspicions that China may try and use the chance to attack or otherwise undermine Taiwan, and the US’s newly diminished military reserves may further compound the possibility China may decide to act.
Since February, the United States has delivered roughly $20 billion in military aid to Ukraine, so much so that President Biden’s administration is failing to keep track of how the cash is being utilized.
The level of US untracked and unaccountable funding to the country has prompted some significant figures within the Republican Party to demand greater transparency in exactly how the money is being spent.
Congress is now also trying to shore up its support for Taiwan with a fast-tracked spending plan with the intent of trying to making the island more ready for an invasion than Ukraine was. An initiative made significantly more difficult by the shortage of many key weapon systems, like the Stinger and Javelin missiles, U.S. stores of which have now been depleted due to having been already used up in the war in Ukraine.
In recent years, China has become more assertive with Taiwan, continuing to insist that the island is Chinese territory. In addition China also refuses to recognize the island’s independence and is using its economic might to try and urge the rest of the globe to do the same.
And although the United States has historically chosen a strategy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan and its relationship with China, in recent years Biden himself has stated multiple times that if an invasion does occurs, the United States will send its own troops to stop it. A move that would likely spark a direct war between the U.S. and China
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