Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to advance the FY2025 NDAA to the Senate floor, which includes a significant provision that would establish a regional contingency stockpile of U.S. weapons in Taiwan.
This stockpile could mirror the shortcomings observed in the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) program, and could have equally disastrous consequences for accountability. The Israel-based reserve’s lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability mechanisms serves as a cautionary tale for why such a model should not be replicated in Taiwan.
Insufficient checks, balances, and transparency
The Israel-based reserve does not have the necessary checks and balances to ensure end use monitoring of stockpiled weapons by Israeli forces. This absence of oversight mechanisms has allowed for withdrawals of military equipment without public documentation or congressional scrutiny. In Taiwan, a similar lack of oversight could result in the unregulated transfer and use of U.S. weapons, which carries with it potential to stoke regional tensions with additional military activity and use of force.
The Israel-based reserve's operations are also shrouded in secrecy, with no public inventory or clear policy guidance on allowable transfers of materials. This opacity has enabled unknown amounts of weapons transfers, in the shadow of ongoing conflict and civilian harm, without any public or legislative scrutiny. Establishing a similar stockpile in Taiwan at a time of heightened geopolitical strain in the Taiwan Strait, could diminish transparency further and erode trust in U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Legal, ethical, and escalatory concerns
One of the most concerning aspects of the Israel-based reserve program is its potential to embolden aggressive Israeli military actions by providing easy access to advanced weaponry. In the volatile context of Taiwan, where tensions with China are perpetually high, the presence of a U.S. weapons stockpile could encourage more confrontational postures. This in turn could trigger an arms race, destabilizing the region and posing significant risks to global security.
The legal frameworks governing the Israel-based reserve, such as the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act, have also proven inadequate in ensuring comprehensive reporting and accountability. Recent legislative efforts, such as the emergency supplemental H.R.815 and the 2023 Securing American Arms Act, have further eroded these constraints, reducing oversight and allowing for more discretionary transfers of defense articles. Replicating this flawed legal and operational structure in Taiwan could similarly lead to U.S. arms being used in violation of international law and human rights standards, or otherwise being diverted to unintended end users.
Enhanced oversight and transparency
To avoid replicating the dangers of WRSA-I, any consideration of a U.S. weapons stockpile in Taiwan must be accompanied by stringent oversight and transparency measures. Congress should mandate comprehensive reporting on all arms transfers and establish robust mechanisms to ensure these weapons are used in accordance with international law and ethical standards. Without such measures, the risks of unchecked militarization and regional instability far outweigh any perceived strategic benefits.
The shortcomings of the Israel-based reserve program provide a clear warning against establishing a similar weapons stockpile in Taiwan. The lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability, coupled with the potential for human rights abuses and regional destabilization, make such a stockpile a highly risky and potentially disastrous proposition. The U.S. must learn from the WRSA-I experience and enact responsible arms transfer policies that promote stability, not undermine it.
Lillian Mauldin is a Founding Board Member of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency and a Research Fellow at the Center for International Policy. Lillian brings expertise and knowledge across a wide range of thematic issues and governance levels, including federal, state, and local. Lillian hopes to help enact policies that will prioritize holistic human wellbeing and that will demilitarize the institutional fabrics of the United States.
Soldiers drive their military vehicles past Taiwan flags during an army exercise in Hsinchu, central Taiwan January 27, 2010. The U.S. and China are currently at odds over an arms sales to Taiwan, according to local media. REUTERS/Nicky Loh (TAIWAN - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS)
Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs' Day, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon November 11, 2023. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
With the confirmed assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah today it is clear now that the entire senior command echelon of Lebanese Hezbollah is dead.
That includes the Radwan commander, in charge of operations against Israel on the ground along the Blue Line, and his key subordinates. Also the top IRGC Quds Force people assigned to Lebanon. Add to this, thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah operatives who rated a company pager are out of action, blind, mutilated or dead.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile depot and factory in Syria has been destroyed by Israeli commandos. The head of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, was assassinated in Tehran, and his successor is buried alive somewhere in Gaza, his army is kaput and his domain pulverized.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthi family in Yemen have all attempted to return these favors but failed. Hamas, for obvious reasons, is incapable. Hezbollah’s weak replies raise the question whether Israeli strikes over time have neutered its massive missile and rocket capacity, or its leadership calculated that they had too much to lose if they used it.
And the Houthis have shown just what it means to be a pathetic, tiny actor at the edge of the world.
What went wrong? Well, a number of things, but I think the main problem was a misperception of regional and global attitudes toward their struggle and an utter failure to understand the impact of October 7 on Israeli society and the license that Sinwar’s sadism gave Israel to destroy Hamas, whatever the cost. And of course, the correlation of forces, as strategists used to say, was not in their favor and probably never will be.
Hamas thought that its opening salvo would trigger a multi-front war that would hobble Israel’s military response. Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis did respond favorably, if symbolically and, for Hamas purposes, uselessly. Late in the war, Iran launched a barrage of missiles against Israel, but this was staved off by a coalition whose very formation demonstrated Iran’s isolation.
All the resistance parties seemed to think that internecine tensions in Israel prior to Sinwar’s stupid maneuver would hamstring Israel’s ability to counterattack. Instead, as anyone who really understood Israel as Sinwar bragged he himself did, his savage attack unified the country behind a ruthless military and political leadership many Israelis detest on a personal level. Within 24 hours of the attack, the IDF had so many reservists flooding mobilization centers it couldn't supply them all.
And the resistance also seemed to believe that the United States, its allies, and the Global South would rise up and smother Israel with disapproval. They appeared to think that it was 2006, when the U.S. and UN shut down Israeli military operations in Lebanon.
But the IDF had thought a lot about 2006 and concluded that in the next round, Washington was not going to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Thus there was never any hope for a Gaza ceasefire. And as aging analysts who've seen it all were saying, some South African court rulings were not going to stop the war or shame Israelis for responding as they saw fit for the enormity of October 7.
And then there was Sinwar, who conceived of himself as the Arab Nguyen Giap, and thought that if he killed enough Palestinians, Israel would surrender, But of course Gaza, nothing more than a tiny prison yard, was not North Vietnam with its much larger population, powerful allies, and potent army. Nor was 2023 Israel anything like the fractured and ambivalent United States of 1968. So all Sinwar accomplished was the decimation of a trapped Palestinian population. The rest was beyond his grasp.
What happens now? Israel has demonstrated its tactical prowess. Up to a point, staggering tactical successes can substitute for strategic incompetence, or perhaps just indifference. After all, if one sees oneself in a never-ending war, strategy is beside the point. But now that Israel’s tactical successes have reversed the appalling effects of its strategic intelligence failure — and kept the Saudis, Emiratis and the United States on its side — it might want to reassess its strategic situation with a view to ending its endless war.
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Shigeru Ishiba, the newly elected leader of Japan's ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds a press conference after the LDP leadership election, in Tokyo, Japan September 27, 2024. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Pool
Alliance minders in Washington and Tokyo are feeling some anxiety today. Shigeru Ishiba has won the contest for leadership of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which means he will become Japan’s next prime minister, succeeding Kishida Fumio — probably Tuesday.
Ishiba, who is 67 and was first elected to the Diet in 1986, has vowed to shake up the 72-year-old security alliance between the United States and Japan, a bilateral alliance that in recent years has focused on maintaining U.S. primacy in East Asia and blocking China’s rise. He views it (correctly, I think) as “asymmetrical,” with Washington largely dictating Japanese foreign policy.
“I don’t think Japan is a truly independent nation yet,” Ishiba, the former defense minister, wrote in a book published just before the leadership race.
Some have called Ishiba a Gaullist; he certainly is a nationalist. In his fifth run for the top party position, he suggested that Japan share command and control over U.S. troops on Japanese soil, and even raised the possibility of stationing some Japanese soldiers on American territory (Guam).
Most controversial, though, has been his sweeping call for an “Asian NATO” that would include not just Japan but also South Korea and several Southeast Asian nations. This proposal, if adopted (and that’s unlikely anytime soon), would replace the hub-and-spokes pattern of bilateral and mini-lateral alliances that emerged after World War II and that are dominated by the United States.
The U.S. has about 85,000 troops stationed at military bases throughout East Asia, primarily in Japan and Korea. It also leads bilateral alliances with the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. And it has been trying to draw India, which shares American hostility toward China, into its web by, for example, including it in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with Japan and Australia.
Ishiba’s proposal for a multilateral security alliance in Asia has fostered strange bedfellows in opposition. Beijing repeatedly has condemned any NATO-like framework that would try to contain or confront China. But Washington, too, dislikes a proposal that could undermine its central position in Asian security networks. A Biden official, speaking anonymously, dismissed it as “fantasy,” while Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, criticized it as hasty. “It’s too early,” he told a forum in Washington, “to talk about collective security in that context.”
In Tokyo, alliance minders are equally concerned but not panicking. Nishimura Rintaro, an associate at the Asia Group Japan, acknowledged that Ishiba wants to “fundamentally change” the U.S.-Japan security relationship. But he added: “I would venture to guess that that’s not going to happen."
Indeed, American and Japanese alliance minders have been here before. In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan interrupted the long reign of the conservative LDP and installed a center-left prime minister. Yukio Hatoyama had campaigned on a platform that alarmed security officials and analysts in both Washington and Tokyo. For example, he called for “fraternal” cooperation with Japan’s Asian neighbors, including China, and pledged to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Okinawa, home to more than 30 American bases. After less than nine months in office, Hatoyama was forced to step down.
In a recent interview for a book, I asked the former prime minister why he was unable to shift Japanese foreign policy. He blamed the “Ampo Mura,” the small village of alliance insiders who enjoy influence by maintaining the trans-Pacific status quo. Hatoyama reserved his strongest criticism for Japanese bureaucrats in the defense and foreign affairs ministries, as well as their U.S. counterparts.
But Shigeru Ishiba is no Yukio Hatoyama. Although he wants to rebalance U.S.-Japan ties, and also favors greater engagement with Beijing, he is actually quite conservative and hawkish, even on China. He is a member of Nippon Kaigi, the ultra-nationalist group that believes Japan was not a villain in World War II; he favors greater defense spending; and he openly backs Taiwan. Ishiba riled Beijing in August by leading a group of lawmakers to Taipei, where he drew parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and security threats in the Taiwan Straits. He hinted that Japan should help deter any Chinese invasion.
China might have favored Ishiba in the LDP leadership contest — but only because the other candidates were even more hawkish. Beijing’s worst nightmare was Sanae Takaichi, the far-right pol who won the first round of voting but could not muster a majority.
It was surprising that Ishiba prevailed in round two. After years of criticizing other party leaders, especially former prime minister Shinzo Abe, he seemed unlikely to warm their hearts. But he is popular with LDP voters who have come to enjoy his maverick style, as well as his quirky hobby (he builds model trains, airplanes and ships). The party, dogged by tanking poll numbers in the wake of a funding scandal, must have figured Ishiba could help rescue the LDP brand before the next general election.
Now the alliance minders will have to get busy. Ishiba “could push the envelope” on the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance, write Nicholas Szechenyi and Yuko Nakano at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. But you can be sure that they and their powerful pals on both sides of the Pacific will push back. Very hard.
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Sen. Mike Lee (Gage Skidmore/Flikr/Creative Commons) and President Joe Biden (White House/Flickr/Creative Commons)
President Joe Biden announced a “surge” of more than $8 billion in military aid for Ukraine during a visit this week by president Volodymyr Zelensky. It was in part, a way to allocate funding before the fiscal year deadline on September 30 and to ensure the flow of weapons to Kyiv would continue through the end of 2024.
The administration is drawing from two pots of money here. One is the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative ($2.4 billion), which allows Kyiv to use the money to buy directly from American defense contractors. This means in most cases it will take a while to get those weapons built and ready for transfer.
Second, is the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). In this case, the president is announcing $375 million in weapons from existing Pentagon stockpiles, but he is also directing the remaining $5.5 billion available in that fund to be allocated immediately before the Monday cut-off. He says the stockpiles will then “be replenished.”
Existing Pentagon stockpiles have dwindled to criticallevels since the U.S. began a steady stream of weapons — everything from 155mm shells, HIMARS, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Bradley fighting vehicles, javelin missiles, mortar rounds, Patriot missiles systems and everything in between, including spare parts and field equipment. In the last tranche of funding approved by Congress in April, there was $7.8 billion in PDA and $13.4 billion to replenish stockpiles. It is not clear how much has been spent on the latter, but experts say it can take months if not years for industry to replace some of this equipment.
It is for that reason that Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), with co-sponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), have introduced a bill this week that would put guardrails on future drawdowns of the PDA. It makes it more difficult to raise the $100 million cap on annual PDA allocations (which Congress has done obviously numerous times for Ukraine), issues a stricter definition of “unforeseen emergencies” for the president to announce drawdowns, and restricts drawdowns to 20-day windows after an emergency is declared.
It also prohibits the president from accessing PDA if the remaining value of drawdown authority exceeds the amount of funding available for stockpile replenishment.
But this comes at a time when many of the senators’ colleagues are pushing Biden to do more. For example, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, lashed out at Biden before his surge announcement.
“It is unfortunately typical of this administration to wait until the last possible moment to announce full use of the PDA,” Wicker said in a statement. “Brave Ukrainians are fighting and dying defending their country so that Americans and Europeans won’t have to. President Biden needs to expedite the actual transfer immediately. They need weapons, not words.”
Responsible Statecraft asked Lee about these efforts in an email exchange earlier this week:
RS: Please share with us why you have seen urgency in modifying the Presidential Drawdown Authority tools now?
Senator Lee: The Biden administration’s use of presidential drawdown authority for Ukraine is unprecedented. Drawdown authority is not a long-term aid strategy and has never been. These are not reserve stocks intended to be used as foreign aid — these are weapons that U.S. troops could need at any moment in higher-priority theaters, namely the Indo-Pacific. But the Biden administration has run the shelves bare until at least 2030. The Biden administration threw 60 years of precedent out the window and irreversibly jeopardized our military readiness for Ukraine. That is why Congress must close the loopholes and remove undue executive discretion that the Biden administration has capitalized on for two years.
RS: There are a number of Republicans, with Democratic assistance, readying ways to keep the aid flowing to Ukraine even if President Trump is elected and wants to put the brakes on it. Is there resistance to this in the House and Senate today? There doesn’t seem to be as much talk about conditioning aid among Republicans as there was before the massive new aid bill was passed in April.
Senator Lee: After two years of recklessness, more than $175 billion later, and with nothing but empty stockpiles to show for it, Republicans, like the American public, are growing skeptical of continued aid for Ukraine, and I believe they will be less inclined to appease President Zelensky’s demands the next time he comes knocking.
RS: As of this writing President Zelensky is currently traveling to the United States for the UN General Assembly and to meet with the presidential candidates and President Biden. He is also visiting an ammo manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania in an effort to convince American leaders to not only give his country more weapons, but to get approval to use those weapons to attack deep into Russia. Should he get approval for these long range attacks into Russia and if not, why?
Senator Lee: The U.S. should not permit Ukraine to use our long-range weapons to strike Russian territory. Doing so would defeat Ukraine’s principal objectives of self-defense and territorial integrity — President Zelensky’s claimed mission for more than two years. Long-range strikes into Russia would inherently alter Ukraine’s strategic footing and make the U.S. complicit in offensive action towards Russia. That is a needless risk for us to take against a nuclear-armed adversary. Every time the Biden administration gives in to one of President Zelensky’s demands, it moves us closer to direct conflict with Russia.
RS: After two and a half years of war in Ukraine and U.S. support for it, how does Senator Lee see the chances for “victory” for Kyiv and what does he believe should happen now to end the war to achieve both independence for Ukraine and stop the bloodshed?
Senator Lee: This conflict will continue as long as the U.S. funds it. President Zelensky has no incentive to negotiate or entertain peace talks as long as the consistent message of the Biden administration is: “as long as it takes.” The fastest way to end the conflict on favorable terms is to make clear to President Zelensky that U.S. aid is not limitless. Reforming presidential drawdown authority, the Biden administration’s tool of choice, is a necessary first step.
RS: In the major aid package for Ukraine in April, a condition was placed in which the administration was supposed to issue a plan detailing "a strategy regarding United States support for Ukraine against aggression by the Russian Federation: Provided, That such strategy shall be multi-year, establish specific and achievable objectives, define and prioritize United States national security interests…” The deadline for this plan was in June, and it came and went without a report until the White House quietly issued a classified version earlier this month (members are now trying to get that unclassified). Is the administration taking the concerns of Congress — that there is no war strategy tied to the billions of dollars the US is spending on it — seriously?
Senator Lee: If the Biden administration were convinced that it could align support for Ukraine with U.S. interests and resources, we would have had a strategy two years ago. The fact that it took more than two years and an act of Congress to force the administration’s hand proves that the administration is content to ignore congressional concerns. No one should put any stock in a “strategy” crafted by the Biden administration. If Congress wants to meaningfully change the administration’s posture on Ukraine, it must start reigning in the authorities at its disposal.
RS: Has there been a strong case made for continued war in Ukraine as a critical U.S. interest beyond the domino theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin will set his sights on Poland and other European countries if not stopped in Ukraine?
Senator Lee: Russia’s performance in Ukraine disproved the notion of an existential Russian threat to Europe or U.S. interests. Russia has struggled to project power or achieve military objectives in its own backyard. That’s not to say that Russia isn’t a formidable threat, but it is hyperbolic to suggest that the fate of Poland or Eastern Europe depends upon Ukraine.
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