By : Ankit Raj, Research Analyst, GSDN

For decades, the United States (US) military set the standard for fighting across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace at the same time. The 1991 Gulf War showed the world what networked precision warfare looked like, and Beijing watched closely. Thirty-five years later, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has turned that lesson into a distinctly Chinese way of war, and in several important respects it is now moving faster than Washington at integrating the domains of conflict into one system. 

“Taking the lead” needs a caveat. China does not outmatch the US in every category. American submarines, combat experience and alliance networks remain formidable advantages. But on the narrower question of who is better organized, better equipped and better rehearsed for multi-domain operations, particularly in the Western Pacific, the momentum belongs to Beijing. 

What multi-domain operations mean 

Multi-domain operations (MDO) is the idea that modern conflict cannot be won inside a single domain. A missile’s strike on a runway is more effective if cyber operations have blinded the air defenses; satellites are feeding targeting data, and electronic warfare is jamming the enemy’s response. Each domain supports the others, and the real advantage comes from linking them faster than the opponent can react. 

The US spent much of the last decade trying to build this. The Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept aims to connect sensors from every service into a single network. The US Army stood for Multi-Domain Task Forces, and exercises like Project Convergence tested how data could flow from drones and satellites to shooters in seconds. These are serious efforts, but they remain largely working in progress, slowed by service rivalries, incompatible systems, and long procurement cycles. 

China arrived at the same destination from a different direction, and it has been willing to restructure its entire military to get there. 

Doctrine built around systems, not platforms 

PLA strategists rarely talk about defeating an enemy’s ships or aircraft one by one. They talk about “systems confrontation,” the idea that modern wars are contesting between entire operational systems, and the winner is whoever can paralyze the other side of system of command, sensing and logistics. Chinese writings describe “system destruction warfare,” which targets the connective tissue of an adversary’s force rather than its individual weapons. 

That mindset explains a lot about what China has chosen to build. It has invested heavily in the things that connect and blind: satellites, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, long-range missiles, and the command networks tying them together. The PLA   uses the term “intelligentized warfare” for the next phase, in which artificial intelligence (AI) speeds up decisions and coordinates swarms of unmanned systems. 

A military reorganized for joint fighting 

The clearest evidence of China’s seriousness is structural. On December 31, 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a sweeping overhaul that created the PLA Rocket Force and the Strategic Support Force, and in early 2016 the old military regions were replaced by five joint theater commands. The point was to break the army-dominated structure that had defined the PLA since its founding and force the services to fight as one team under a single commander in each region. 

The Strategic Support Force bundled space, cyber, electronic warfare, and psychological operations into a single organization. On April 19, 2024, Beijing went further and dissolved it, replacing it with three separate arms: the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Information Support Force. Analysts read this as a refinement rather than a retreat, giving each of these critical functions its own leadership while keeping the information backbone of the force under direct central control. 

Contrast this with the American situation. The US has a joint structure on paper through its combatant commands, but the services still buy their own equipment, build their own networks and protect their own budgets. The Pentagon’s own planners have acknowledged that connecting Air Force, Navy and Army systems is a chronic challenge. Beijing’s top-down political system, for all its other weaknesses, can impose organizational change in a way Washington’s cannot. 

Space and cyber: the quiet contest 

Space is where China’s progress is most visible and, for American planners, most worrying. According to US Space Force officials, China now operates well over a thousand satellites, with several hundred dedicated to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Those satellites matter because they let the PLA find and track American carrier groups and bases across the Pacific, which is the first step in striking them. 

China has also shown it is willing to test the edges of space warfare. It destroyed one of its own weather satellites with a missile on January 11, 2007, scattering debris across orbit. In 2021, reports emerged that it had tested a fractional orbital bombardment system, in which a hypersonic glider is released from a spacecraft in low orbit. Reporting the Financial Times on October 16, 2021, said the test circled the globe before gliding toward its target, and US officials called it a shock. Whatever its practical military value, it signaled a Chinese capacity for surprise that Washington had underestimated. 

Cyberspace tells a similar story. On May 24, 2023, Microsoft and US and allied agencies publicly warned about a Chinese state-linked group dubbed Volt Typhoon, which had quietly positioned itself inside American critical infrastructure such as communications, energy and water systems. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) later warned, in an advisory dated February 7, 2024, that the group was prepositioning for potential disruption during a crisis.  

The pattern matters for multi-domain operations. Cyber access built in peacetime is a weapon that can be activated at the start of a conflict to slow American mobilization, confuse logistics and complicate decision-making at home. China has been building that option for years. 

Missiles that hold the whole theater at risk 

If the cyber and space domains are about seeing and blinding, the missile force is about striking. The PLA Rocket Force fields the largest and most diverse arsenal of conventional ballistic and cruise missiles in the world. The DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles are designed to threaten aircraft carriers and bases hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from China’s coast. The DF-17, with its hypersonic glide vehicle, is built to defeat missile defenses. 

This forms the backbone of what Western analysts call anti-access/area denial (A2/AD), a layered system meant to make it extremely costly for American forces to operate near China. The Pentagon’s China Military Power Report, released on December 18, 2024, noted continued growth in the PLA’s missile inventories and in China’s nuclear stockpile, which the department assessed had passed 600 operational warheads by mid-2024. 

What makes this a multi-domain advantage, rather than just a big arsenal, is integration. Satellites find the target; cyber and electronic warfare degrade the defense, and missiles deliver the blow. The PLA has spent years rehearsing exactly this chain. 

An industrial base that can outbuild everyone 

Multi-domain operations are not only about concepts. They depend on having enough ships, aircraft, drones and munitions to sustain a fight, and here China’s industrial scale is a strategic asset. The Pentagon’s 2024 report counted the PLA Navy at roughly 370 ships and submarines, already the world’s largest by number, and the gap in shipbuilding capacity is enormous. US naval intelligence briefings have reportedly estimated that China’s shipyards have a capacity many times greater than America’s, a gap that would matter enormously in a prolonged conflict where losses must be replaced. 

China’s policy of military-civil fusion deepens this advantage by pulling commercial technology firms, universities and shipyards directly into defense production. American defense officials have openly worried that US industry cannot ramp up munitions production fast enough to sustain a high-intensity war.   

AI and unmanned systems 

The September 3, 2025, military parade in Beijing, held to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, offered a glimpse of where this is heading. Alongside familiar missiles and aircraft, China displayed a range of large unmanned underwater vehicles, uncrewed aerial systems and what it described as collaborative combat drones designed to fly alongside crewed fighters. Whether or not every system on display is combat-ready; the message was that Beijing sees autonomy and AI as central to future multi-domain fighting. 

The US is pursuing similar capabilities, including its own collaborative combat aircraft program, and in some areas of AI research American firms remain ahead. But China’s willingness to field, test and iterate quickly, combined with a state-directed push to integrate AI into military planning, gives it a different kind of momentum. 

Practice makes integration 

Concepts only matter if forces can execute them. The PLA has used large-scale drills around Taiwan as a rehearsal stage for joint, multi-domain operations. After then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei on August 2, 2022, China launched its largest exercises in the area to date, firing ballistic missiles over the island and simulating a blockade. Further drills followed: Joint Sword-2024A on May 23, 2024, Joint Sword-2024B on October 14, 2024, and Strait Thunder-2025A on April 1, 2025. 

These exercises combine naval, air, missile, cyber, and information operations under joint command. They also serve a political purpose, normalizing a Chinese military presence around Taiwan and probing how the US and its partners respond. The more the PLA practices this, the smoother its coordination becomes, and the more its leaders gain confidence that the system works. China’s training can focus overwhelmingly on a single scenario in its own neighborhood, which is an advantage in preparation even if it is a limitation in global reach. 

Where the United States still holds the edge 

It would be a mistake to write the obituary of American military power. The US retains clear advantages that matter in any serious assessment. 

The American submarine force remains quieter and more capable than China’s, and undersea warfare is one domain where Washington is clearly ahead. The US also has decades of real combat experience, including operations that tested joint coordination under pressure, while PLA has not fought a major war since 1979, and its officers have never commanded complex joint operations in actual combat. That is a real and unquantifiable weakness. 

Alliances matter too. Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and others give the US basing, intelligence and combined strength that China cannot match with partners of its own. Also, PLA’s own system has vulnerabilities: heavy dependence on centralized control may make it brittle, and recent purges of senior officers, including within the Rocket Force, raise questions about leadership stability and readiness. 

So the more accurate claim is not that China is universally ahead, but that it is ahead in integrating its force for specific regional fights, and that this is the fight Washington worries about most. 

What this means going forward 

China’s advantage rests on three things: doctrine that treats warfare as a contest of systems, a military restructured to carry that doctrine out, and an industrial base capable of producing the hardware at scale. Each of these is difficult for the US to match quickly, because American strengths in technology are often undercut by slow acquisition, service rivalries and a shrinking, stretched defense industry. 

The good news for Washington is that these problems are fixable in principle. Faster procurement, genuine data-sharing across the services, a rebuilt munitions and shipbuilding base, and deeper integration with allies could all narrow the gap. Several of these efforts are already underway. The question is whether they move quickly enough. 

The lesson of the past decade is that multi-domain operations are less about any one gadget and more about organization, speed and rehearsal. China figured out early that the side which links its sensors, networks and weapons most smoothly, and which can break the other side’s links first, gets to set the terms of a conflict. The US invented much of the technology behind that idea. For now, it is China that has done more to turn it into an operating reality. 

By : Pratyush Raj, Research Analyst, GSDN

Introduction 

The United States has long been considered the world’s most powerful military power. Its strength comes from its large defence budget, advanced aircraft, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, missiles, drones, satellites, and military bases across the world. The US military can also move troops and equipment over very long distances and conduct operations far from its own territory. 

The 2026 Iran War, however, has raised questions about how sustainable this military power is during a prolonged conflict. The United States has carried out major attacks against Iran and has damaged important Iranian military capabilities. At the same time, American forces have faced repeated missile and drone attacks, used large quantities of expensive weapons, suffered casualties and lost or damaged military aircraft. 

This raises an important question: Has the Iran War weakened the US military? 

The answer is not simply yes or no. The United States has not been defeated by Iran and remains much stronger in conventional military terms. However, the war has exposed weaknesses in American military readiness, particularly in weapons stocks, air defence, logistics and the protection of overseas bases. The war has therefore not ended American military superiority, but it has shown the costs and limits of maintaining that superiority during a long conflict. 

The Cost of the War 

The conflict began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran. The American campaign relied heavily on-air power, precision weapons and attacks on Iranian military infrastructure. Iran responded with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones against American and allied positions across the region. 

The conflict continued much longer than many initially expected. By September, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war had cost the United States around $38 billion, with approximately $3 billion in additional costs every month if the conflict continued. A Pentagon report covering the period until June 30 also found that around $22 billion had been spent on munitions used during the operation. 

There has also been a human cost. The Pentagon reported at least 18 US military deaths by June 30, including 11 killed in action and seven deaths from non-hostile incidents. At least 417 military personnel were wounded in Iranian attacks during the same period. These figures do not suggest that the United States has lost the war. They do show, however, that even a major technological advantage cannot prevent a prolonged conflict from creating substantial financial and military costs. 

Depletion of Missile Stocks 

One of the biggest concerns created by the war is the amount of advanced ammunition used by American forces. The US military depends heavily on precision-guided weapons because they allow American forces to attack targets from long distances. However, these weapons are expensive and often difficult to produce quickly. 

In August, Reuters reported that the United States had used virtually all of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles during the war. These are important long-range weapons that give American forces the ability to strike targets from a considerable distance. The United States also used a significant portion of its Tomahawk cruise-missile stock. 

This is important because these weapons are not required only for Iran. They are also part of American preparations for possible conflicts involving countries such as China and Russia. A large reduction in available long-range missiles can therefore affect American readiness beyond the Middle East. This does not mean that the United States has run out of weapons. The problem is more specific: some important types of advanced weapons have been used faster than they can be replaced. 

That creates a readiness problem because the US military has to remain prepared for several possible threats at the same time. If a large part of its stock is used in one conflict, rebuilding that stock becomes necessary before the military can be fully prepared for another major war. 

Pressure on Air Defence 

The United States has also faced pressure while defending its own forces from Iranian attacks. Iran has used ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, forcing American forces to rely on systems such as Patriot and THAAD. These systems have protected American personnel and military installations, but their use has also reduced the number of available interceptors. 

This creates an important economic problem. Iran can use relatively inexpensive drones or missiles, while the United States may have to use a much more expensive interceptor to destroy them. The American system may successfully stop the attack, but repeated exchanges can still put pressure on US weapons stocks. 

The problem becomes more serious during a long war because advanced interceptors cannot be produced instantly. The United States has therefore started increasing production. In September, the Pentagon awarded RTX’s Raytheon a provisional $20.7 billion contract to increase AMRAAM missile production. It has also signed a $58.6 billion Patriot interceptor agreement with Lockheed Martin. 

These contracts show that Washington recognizes the need to rebuild its weapons stocks. However, factories need time to expand production, find workers, and secure specialized components. The war has therefore exposed a gap between the number of weapons that the US military may need during a major conflict and the speed at which industry can replace them. 

Vulnerability of American Bases 

Another important lesson from the war is the vulnerability of American military bases in the Middle East. The United States operates military facilities in countries including Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Iraq. These bases are strategically important because they allow American forces to operate close to potential conflict zones. 

However, they can also become targets. Iran has repeatedly used missiles and drones against American military facilities. A Pentagon watchdog report found that hundreds of buildings and structures at US military installations in the region were damaged or destroyed during the conflict. 

American aircraft have also been lost or damaged. The Pentagon report recorded the loss of at least 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones, along with damage to other aircraft. The Reaper is important because it provides surveillance, intelligence, and strike capabilities without putting a pilot directly in danger. 

The attacks have shown that American bases are not completely protected by distance. Modern missiles and drones can travel long distances and threaten aircraft, buildings, fuel supplies, and other infrastructure. This could force the United States to rethink how it protects overseas bases. Greater dispersal of aircraft, stronger shelters, and better air-defence systems may become increasingly important in future conflicts. 

The Logistics Problem 

The war has also highlighted the importance of logistics. Military strength is not only about aircraft, ships, and missiles. A military also needs fuel, spare parts, ammunition, maintenance facilities and transportation. Without these resources, even advanced weapons cannot continue operating effectively. 

The Iran War has created logistical challenges for American forces in the region. A Pentagon assessment highlighted difficulties involving naval bases and access to ports for resupply. It also noted the long distances involved in shifting logistics support to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where sea transportation could require 14 to 18 days. 

Such distances may not be a major problem during peacetime, but they become important during war. If an aircraft needs a spare part or a military unit needs ammunition, delays can affect operations. The conflict has therefore shown that America’s global military presence is both an advantage and a challenge. The United States can operate across the world, but maintaining those forces requires a large and complicated supply network. 

Has Iran Defeated the United States? 

Despite these problems, it would be incorrect to say that Iran has defeated the United States militarily. The military balance between the two countries remains heavily in America’s favour. The United States has advanced aircraft, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, sophisticated intelligence systems, satellites and a much larger defence-industrial base. 

American forces have also carried out major attacks against Iranian military infrastructure, including air-defence systems, radar installations, missile facilities and maritime assets. US Central Command has continued to report offensive operations against Iranian military targets. 

Iran therefore has not demonstrated that it can match the United States in conventional military power. What Iran has demonstrated is something different: a weaker military can still impose significant costs on a much stronger opponent. By using missiles and drones, Iran has forced the United States to spend large amounts of money on defence while using valuable ammunition. This does not amount to defeating the American military, but it does show that American superiority does not mean that every conflict will be cheap or easy. 

Why the War Matters Beyond Iran 

The lessons from Iran are particularly important because the United States also must prepare for possible conflicts with countries that have much greater military resources. China has a large missile arsenal, a growing navy and an expanding defence industry. Russia also possesses a major missile capability and a large military-industrial base. 

If Iran can put pressure on American missile stocks and air-defence systems, a conflict with a larger military power could create an even greater challenge. This is particularly important in the Indo-Pacific. A possible conflict involving China would cover a huge geographical area, requiring American forces to protect aircraft carriers, air bases, ships and supply routes across thousands of kilometers. 

The depletion of American weapons during the Iran War therefore matters beyond the Middle East. American defence planners have to consider whether the country has enough weapons to sustain one major conflict while still being prepared for another crisis. 

Rebuilding American Military Capacity 

The United States has already started taking steps to increase weapons production. In August, the US Navy awarded Raytheon a $22.9 billion contract intended to increase Tomahawk production from around 60 missiles a year to more than 1,000. The September AMRAAM contract is another example of this effort. These decisions show that Washington understands that the problem is not only the quality of its weapons but also the number available. 

However, rebuilding military stocks cannot happen immediately. Defence factories need additional workers, raw materials, machinery, and specialized components. Some advanced weapons also require complicated production processes. This means that the United States may face a temporary gap between what its military needs during a conflict and what its defence industry can produce at that moment. The Iran War has therefore raised questions about the quantity as well as the quality of American  military equipment. 

The Need for Cheaper Defences 

Another lesson from the war is the need for cheaper ways of dealing with drones and other relatively inexpensive threats. Using an expensive interceptor against a dangerous ballistic missile may be necessary. However, repeatedly using costly missiles against cheaper drones can put pressure on American weapons stocks and defence spending. 

The United States is therefore likely to increase its focus on electronic warfare, directed-energy weapons and cheaper interceptors. These systems could deal with smaller threats while allowing advanced missile-defence systems to focus on more serious attacks. This would create a layered defence system in which the most expensive weapons are not used against every incoming threat. 

Conclusion 

The Iran War has not broken or defeated the US military. The United States remains the world’s most powerful military, with major advantages in air power, naval power, intelligence, technology and defence production. However, the conflict has exposed important weaknesses in American military readiness. Large quantities of advanced weapons have been used, American bases have suffered damage, aircraft and drones have been lost, and American servicemembers have been killed and wounded. The financial cost has also reached tens of billions of dollars. The most important lesson is that military superiority is not only about having the most advanced weapons. It is also about having enough weapons, supplies, and production capacity to continue fighting for a long period. Iran has shown that a country with fewer military resources can still create serious costs for a much stronger opponent by using missiles and drones, attacking military bases and forcing the United States to use expensive defensive systems. 

Therefore, the Iran War should not be viewed as a defeat for American military power. Instead, it has exposed weaknesses that were already present in the US defence system. The United States now has to rebuild missile stocks, increase production, improve the protection of overseas bases and find cheaper ways to deal with drones and other low-cost threats. The war has therefore weakened some aspects of US military readiness, but it has not fundamentally weakened US military power. Its long-term significance will depend on how successfully the United States responds to these lessons and prepares for future conflicts. 

By: Lt Col JS Sodhi (Retd), Editor, GSDN

The United Nations Charter, consisting of a Preamble and 111 articles divided into 19 chapters, was signed in San Francisco, USA, on June 26, 1945, and led to the creation of the United Nations Organisation on October 24, 1945. The Preamble of the United Nations Charter reaffirms faith in fundamental human rights and the worth of the human person.

A country best upholds fundamental human rights and the worth of the human person when people can vote freely and justice is impartial. A nation’s international credibility strengthens when it holds free and fair elections and maintains an independent judiciary. China scores badly on both counts. The V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute ranks China 171^st in the democracy index, while the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks China 92^nd. The world has 195 nations, of which 193 are members of the United Nations Organisation.

The USA, on the other hand, as the world’s oldest democracy, fares much better than China in both free and fair elections and an independent judiciary. Hence, it was only natural that the world would gravitate toward America’s leadership, as its democratic values held great depth. After World War II ended in 1945, and until the Cold War ended in 1991 with the disintegration of the USSR, most of the world aligned with the USA, while a few aligned with the USSR.

From 1992 to 2007, until China emerged as the world’s third-largest economy and began asserting itself internationally, the USA enjoyed undisputed status as the world’s sole superpower. A year later, in 2008, Russia after its success in Georgia, was rising as a superpower. In 2010 after China became the world’s second-biggest economy, it’s arrival was becoming America uncomfortable.

Much has changed in the last 16 years, and the China factor is now leaving America helpless on four major fronts: military, economic, technological, and diplomatic.

On December 21, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced the East Asia Strategy, also known as Pivot to Asia, shifting American focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Indo-Pacific Region to counter China’s rise as a rival superpower. China was now a reckonable military challenge.

With China controlling 31% of the world’s manufacturing and a US$ 1.2 trillion trade surplus, and as the largest trading partner for 151 countries, China has also arrived economically.

As of 2025, China produced 77,179 STEM PhDs, compared with the USA’s 39,959, and leads in 57 of the 64 critical global technologies, while the USA leads in the remaining seven. China also controls 92% of the rare earth minerals, essential to almost everything manufactured globally. China’s technological prowess needs no further emphasis.

With the Global South comprising 134 nations, the bulk of them firmly with China, apart from China’s increasing influence in Europe and Asia, diplomatically too, China is seen as a more trustworthy ally as compared to the USA by the majority of the world, as is evident by China’s increasing diplomatic competence.

China’s Rise

In many fora, one often hears that China is a communist nation, that China is an authoritarian country, or that democracies progress slowly. That clearly isn’t true, as multi-party democracies have also risen. Most people don’t want to discuss or hear what China got right, which has propelled it to the power it is today.

The most basic issue that China tackled after the end of the Civil War in 1949 was education. In 1950, just a year after the Chinese Civil War ended, China’s per capita GDP was just US$ 614 in current international dollars (adjusted for purchasing power parity). The same year, the USA had a per capita GDP of US$ 1974, and the USSR, the other superpower at the time had a per capita GDP of US$ 1218.

However, China focused on education, as the literacy rate in China in 1949 was just between 20-40%. After taking power, the Communist Party made education one of its foremost priorities and, through both formal schooling and literacy programmes, tripled school enrolment, increased secondary school enrolment by a factor of 8.5, and quadrupled college enrolment in the first sixteen years.

Though the first three decades of modern China saw artificial disasters like the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution, China’s focus on education never wavered. After US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972, which subsequently led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USA and China on January 01, 1979, China slowly started to become a manufacturing hub as the USA, realising the vast pool of skilled and educated labour available in China, started outsourcing manufacturing to China.

Thereafter, China never looked back. It has now reached the stage where the USA has acknowledged China’s prowess as America finds itself helpless. Two statements in the past couple of years explain the USA’s predicament.

One, Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, stated that China is carrying out the largest military buildup since World War II, perhaps in world history.

Two, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War of the 47^th US President Donald Trump’s administration, remarked in a candid statement that China’s hypersonic missiles could destroy the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers in just 20 minutes. He further added that in every war game conducted in the US Military, the Americans always lose to the Chinese. Militaries worldwide conduct war games to assess the readiness of military strategies and simulate real-war scenarios.

Economically too, China is the clear pole leader. Chatham House, in a report published on September 30, 2026, has underlined that China is on track to produce 45% of all manufactured goods in the world by 2030. China’s share of global manufacturing in 2000 was a mere 6%. The USA’s share in global manufacturing has dropped from 25% in 2000 to a projected 11% in 2030.

Sample the period 2020-2024 for the number of world-leading scientists in both China and the USA. In 2020, the USA had 36,959 world-leading scientists, while China had almost half of that number at 18,805. In 2024, China became the global leader in the number of world-leading scientists with 32,511, while the USA had 31,781. China spends more on research and development (R&D) than the USA. In 2024, China spent US$ 1.03 trillion on R&D, while the USA spent US$ 1.01 trillion, according to OECD data. In 2024, China put 295,000 new factory robots to work, more than all countries combined. Currently, China has over 2 million robots working in its factories, five times more than the USA. Technologically, China is now the global leader, leading in 57 of the 64 critical global technologies, as has been stated earlier.

Why is America Helpless

After President Donald Trump unleashed the Tariff War on April 09, 2025, on 90 nations, only two nations, i.e. China and Canada, retaliated with counter-tariffs on the USA. It would have been prudent for America to go hammer and tongs at these two nations. But this didn’t happen. Instead, Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025, which led the USA to suspend tariffs on China for a year.

Donald Trump had no choice, as China enforced restrictions on rare earth mineral exports covering 12 of 17 rare earth elements (REE) few months later, through the Ministry of Commerce Announcement 2025 No. 61, issued on October 09, 2025. The US military-industrial complex was adversely affected by China’s curbs on REEs, as they are essential to every weapon system manufactured. China’s control over Indium Phosphide exports has threatened the Artificial Intelligence data centres rollouts.

A helpless America could do nothing but mend fences with China. Hence, the Busan meeting between the two Presidents saw America suspend tariffs on China and, in return, China eased REE curbs on the USA.

And if that wasn’t enough, China passed the Amended Foreign Trade & Export Control Law on December 27, 2025, effective March 01, 2026, which expanded the legal and enforcement basis for sanctions on foreign governments, companies, and individuals. As a result, USA imports of Yttrium Oxide from China dropped to 10 metric tons in April 2026, down from 60 metric tons in March 2026. Yttrium Oxide is an important rare-earth compound used across high-tech, industrial, and manufacturing sectors.

Clearly, the American industry was fully incapacitated due to the curbs imposed by China. Even as the USA’s war with Iran raged on, President Donald Trump headed to Beijing on May 13-15, 2026, and made overtures to China, including clearing Nvidia H200 chip sales to 10 Chinese firms. A long-standing sore point for China, the enactment of the CHIPS and Science Act by the USA on August 09, 2022, had been resolved. What pleased China more was Donald Trump’s May 15, 2026, statement during the visit that Taiwan was 9500 miles away. A clear indicator that in the event of China’s war on Taiwan, the USA will not come to the aid of Taiwan.

America was helpless yet again. China’s tightening of REE and rare earth compound exports to the USA was bearing fruit.

One sticking point, though, remained for China. And it was the US arms package announced for Taiwan on December 17, 2025, worth US$ 11.1 billion. This issue too didn’t have to wait long to go in China’s favour. Ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit to the USA from September 23-25, 2026, Donald Trump suspended the arms package to Taiwan.

Once again, America proved helpless before China.

As Xi Jinping landed in Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, USA on September 23, 2026 for his State Visit to the USA, after a gap of 11 years, Donald Trump personally received him at the base. The first for an American President personally receiving a foreign leader since 1962 except the Popes, demonstrating the power that the Chinese President wields. Throughout his visit, Xi Jinping travelled in a China-made, custom-built Hongqi N701 armoured limousine. Only seven countries in the world manufacture official state limousines which are used by their Heads of State while travelling abroad. China has entered a league unimaginable six decades back.

A country that had retaliated with counter-tariffs on the USA, was seeing its President being personally received by the American President, clearly proving how the USA was now helpless in front of China!

Consequences of America’s helplessness

As China grows economically and militarily while American power declines, it signals disaster for democracy and the rules-based world order, since China doesn’t subscribe to these values. As China rises economically, militarily, and technologically, its diplomatic prowess is rising exponentially too. The China factor will be difficult to challenge as time rolls on.

Two nations that will bear the immediate brunt of American helplessness in front of Chinese supremacy in the near future are Taiwan and India. These two nations are part of China’s military aims. China is expected to wage the war for Taiwan at the end of 2027 and wage the two-front war with Pakistan against India any time after 2030.

While America has proved helpless in front of China, and the world-at-large is unable to withstand the Chinese grip that is slowly tightening on the world, countries like Taiwan and India have to also prepare for the war on the horizon that stares both these countries. With no external aid assured, both Taiwan and India are up against a formidable China, whose mettle has been acknowledged even by America.

By : Glory Saikia, Research Analyst, GSDN

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military offensive against Iran, producing an unprecedented operational tempo of nearly 900 strikes within the first twelve hours. This was Operation Epic Fury/Operation Roaring Lion, and it triggered a rapid escalation into a multi-front regional war spanning Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf, and key maritime routes. The weak points of the Iranian regime paved the way for attacks, as there were extensive protests in Iran since early 2026 motivated by a weakened economy and infrastructure. Its regional allies have also been weakened by Israeli military action from 2023. Moreover, Iran’s counterstrikes on Arab Gulf states in 2026 have also left it further isolated. The attacks also follow the failure of indirect negotiations in February on a new agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme. 

 The Congressional Research Service states that President Trump listed several goals: stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, destroying its missiles, and wiping out its missile industry. Early coverage by U.S. Naval Institute News also reported that Trump publicly claimed the strikes had killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The U.S. commander leading the war in Iran, Admiral Brad Cooper, confirmed the use of a variety of AI tools that allowed the leaders to make smarter decisions faster. The use of AI in Iran war signals that the targeting supported by the algorithms is becoming a warfare norm with significant risks. The Iranian Government condemned the US-Israel attacks as a breach of the UN Charter and said it would exercise the right to self-defence for as long as the attacks continue. The Iranian government confirmed the death of Ali Khamenei at his office in the capital, Tehran. 

The war was based on irregular tactics, terrorism and coercion, and criminal or disruptive activity operating across physical and psychological dimensions. Air and missile strike, Escalation through partners and proxies such as Hezbollah and regional militias, Disruption of shipping, and a constant fight over public opinion all ran together in this war. Considering these accounts, we can say that the Iran war is the first large-scale conflict in which AI was not just a support tool but a core part of how decisions were made. 

AI and the Changing Nature of Modern Hybrid Warfare 

In the past few years, Artificial Intelligence has evolved into a powerful tool that enables machines to think and act like humans. Hybrid war is the art of synchronization at its core. It often erases the traditional line between peace and war by weaving very different levers of national power into a single strategy. A missile strike has the ability to leave an undeniable physical trail and often draw immediate international condemnation. However, a hybrid operation can quietly destabilize an electrical grid or polarize the social media feeds of people without even triggering a formal declaration of war. Contemporary hybrid warfare involves asymmetric cyber operations where attacks on critical digital networks and operational technologies are carried out with plausible deniability to avoid direct military retaliation. It aims at weakening the opponent’s economy and limiting its defence funding through instruments like targeted sanctions, asset freezing, and maritime blockades. Automation, machine learning and data analytics are used to OutSpace and adversary decision-making, while coordinated propaganda and state-backed media are used to deepen social divisions and steer political narratives. 

Artificial Intelligence has moved into the battlefield, and its central value lies in its ability to process vast and varied streams of data at overwhelming speeds. Algorithmic warfare operates across several domains in the Iran–Israel–U.S. theatre. Historical strike patterns, behavioral anomalies, and logistics footprints were analyzed in the predictive threat modelling to anticipate proxy stacks. Satellite imagery and intercepted communications were aggregated to map adversary movements in real time. Moreover, the automated network defence monitors networks and zero-day vulnerabilities at machine speed that helped in stopping the cyber strikes before human security teams could even detect them. 

AI-Enabled Military Technologies Used in Iran War 

The AI technologies and targeting infrastructure deployed in Iran have evolved and scaled across multiple prior deployments. The U.S. Department of Defence’s flagship AI program, Project Maven, had been providing various targeting support for the airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea since 2024. For its operations in Iran, the AI platforms from Anthropic sifted through massive volumes of data from satellites, reconnaissance drones, intercepted communications, and ground sensors. Along with analyzing adversary movements, it also forecasted potential countermeasures and refined strike strategies across air, naval, terrestrial, and cyber domains. It uses satellite imagery, geological data, and human intelligence to inform targeting recommendations. 

The escalation of three simultaneous events was the most significant dimension of the Iran conflict. First, the United States placed Anthropic on its security blacklist after CEO Dario Amodei refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude for ‘all lawful purposes,’ insisting on two exceptions: no use for mass domestic surveillance of Americans, and no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight. Second, Operation Epic Fury commenced with Claude already embedded in U.S. military targeting workflows through Project Maven and classified AWS environments – used by CENTCOM for intelligence analysis, target identification, and operational simulations. Third, hours after Anthropic’s blacklisting, OpenAI announced an agreement with the Pentagon for military applications of its models. 

The national security strategy of Israel is deeply interconnected with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its military operations in this dispute. Israel has been positioned at the frontline of military AI applications in its strategic and defence capabilities due to its dedication to various technological advancements. The AI algorithms refined by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have enabled for rapid decision-making and target allocation for air defence systems such as the Iron Dome, Arrow missile defence system and David’s Sling. These innovations improved Israel’s defence capabilities as well as allowed for swift responses to the evolving risks. It has also engaged in AI-driven targeting systems to detect and engage threats more efficiently; during the bombing campaign in Gaza, the IDF utilized an AI system known as Habsora, or “the Gospel,” that self-regulate the recommend targets for human analysts. 

In the AI-enabled era, the Iran conflict revealed the new typology of military advantage. The AI capabilities of Iran were substantially more limited due to the international sanctions that restricted its access to advanced semiconductors and AI development infrastructure. However, countries must also tackle the associated challenges and ethical considerations to maintain a strategic advantage while supporting international norms and standards. 

Ethical Gaps and Governance Challenges  

The profound impact of military innovation can be observed throughout history: from gunpowder and cannons to hybrid warfare. Technology has the power to challenge the existing social structure by bringing about social revolutions in military operations. When AI-assisted systems perform the analytical and deliberative work in place of human judgement, humans become less equipped to apply contextual moral reasoning in sensitive matters. 

Algorithmic decision-making also engenders disruptive effects on the balance of power as it causes shifts in military practices, challenging the existing legal and ethical norms governing the conduct of warfare. The Iran conflict underscored the inadequacy of existing governance frameworks for military AI. Meaningful oversight may be reduced by the speed and volume of data that the AI systems can process and may reduce the operator’s ability to verify the recommendations. Its decision-making system remains opaque and prone to errors that can strain adherence to principles of proportionality and distinction even where formal safeguards exist. With the emergence of these algorithms in military systems, there is likely to be a structural vulnerability for the democratic conduct of war. 

The United Nations General Assembly resolution titled ‘Artificial intelligence in the military domain and its implications for international peace and security’ addresses the security challenges of military AI beyond lethal autonomous weapons. It affirms that the UN Charter, international humanitarian law and human rights lawfully apply across every stage of the military cycle of AI. However, it provides no binding enforcement mechanism and did not prevent the deployment of AI targeting systems in Iran two months later. 

The pattern of artificial intelligence in warfare is visible well beyond this conflict, as the United States’ Project Maven applies machine learning to military surveillance, Israel uses AI targeting algorithms in Gaza, and Ukraine deploys semi-autonomous zones. Iran has increasingly turned to using AI in strengthening its cyber capabilities and defences, treating it to offset Israel’s military advantage. It also claims to go further by positioning AI in ballistic missile targeting and drone swarms as central to its national security strategy. Israel has also used AI to strengthen its Iron Dome missile defence system and refine predictive intelligence for counterterrorism. 

The tragedy at Minab, where at least 150 people, including schoolchildren, were killed, was characterized as a grave violation of humanitarian law by the United Nations. This highlights how AI-assisted systems misidentify civilian targets due to algorithmic bias or sensor failure. In incidents like Minab, accountability fractures across the chain of development and practical application, as programmers cannot anticipate operational contexts and commanders disclaim responsibility for machine decisions. 

The adequate governance of military AI will require procedures that address both technical and normative dimensions of the accountability gaps as exposed in the Iran conflict. As suggested by the recent scholarship, AI systems should be regulated based on what they do rather than how they are officially described at the technical level. The use of terms such as “human-in-the-loop” can give the impression that humans have meaningful control when they may only approve AI-generated recommendations very quickly. If an AI system produces 900 targeting recommendations in twelve hours, and human operators review them within seconds, it is difficult to consider this genuine human control, even if humans formally authorize the final decisions, as is evident in the case of Iran. At the institutional level, effective governance also requires actual opportunities for humans to override AI decisions rather than on paper. It also requires practically accessible features of AI-DSS, combined with dynamic trust calibration systems that modulate operator reliance on AI recommendations based on demonstrated accuracy and training programs to develop operators’ capacity for independent judgment even under time pressure. Additionally, the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) need to be converted into clear operational rules at the international level by including minimum deliberative time per targeting decision, maximum AI recommendation throughput per operator, and required confidence thresholds before AI targets are actionable. It is essential to convert normative commitments into enforceable constraints. 

AI and the Emerging Security Landscape of the Middle East  

The implications of AI technologies extend beyond this specific conflict and its military strategies, influencing the political and economic landscape of the Middle East region. On one hand, AI can improve surveillance and security, while on the other hand, it escalates tensions, sparks an arms race, and undermines trust among regional actors. There is the possibility of new forms of arms competition centered on surveillance infrastructure and algorithmic strategies in the Middle East. 

When AI-assisted systems are deployed in cyber operations, it poses certain threats and risks to critical infrastructure and communication networks. The application of Maven Smart System also creates pressure on other regional states to develop such capabilities. The Iranian attacks on Amazon data centers in the UAE and Bahrain caused regional banking and consumer service disruptions, which shows how the boundary between military and civilian infrastructure can be blurred. 

Conclusion 

Even though both the USA and Israel used AI in the war, their applications were directed towards different perspectives, with the USA’s reliance on AI-supported systems, drone imagery, target identification and decision-making, and Israel’s use of AI in its existing intelligence and defence system. It integrated AI into missile defence, threat detection, and predictive intelligence. The Iran conflict demonstrates how the integration of AI into defence technologies and decision-making can weaken moral human judgement. There must be adequate policies on the lawful use of AI to prevent discrimination, bias, and establish accountability. 

By: Khushbu Ahlawat, Consulting Editor, GSDN

Introduction

At a Taipei trade fair in 2026, Indian firms quietly did something more consequential than close a few deals — they demonstrated that a country can build real influence without ever needing an embassy to do it. Walk the exhibition floor of COMPUTEX Taipei in any recent year and you will find the usual suspects: American chip giants, Japanese robotics firms, South Korean display manufacturers. At the 2026 edition, though, something had shifted. Indian companies — among them Sahasra and Zoho — were not peripheral visitors but active participants, pitching partnerships in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and electronics manufacturing to an audience that included more than 1,500 exhibitors and upward of 111,000 visitors from over 150 countries and regions, in a show that spanned AI computing, robotics, intelligent mobility, next-generation communications and advanced semiconductor technology. None of this happened through an Indian embassy in Taipei, because no such embassy exists, nor will one anytime soon. And that, more than the specific deals struck on the floor, is the real story.

India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It never has, and under the One China policy New Delhi has long maintained, it is unlikely to anytime soon. Yet the two have been building something substantial anyway — in trade, in technology, in labour mobility, even in science and public health — entirely outside the traditional architecture of embassies, ambassadors and state visits. What is happening between New Delhi and Taipei is a useful case study in a broader shift taking place in how international influence actually gets built in the twenty-first century: not only through flags and formal recognition, but through the far less visible work of becoming indispensable to the systems the world runs on.

Why Technology Now Buys What Diplomacy Used To

For most of the post-war era, a country’s global standing was measured in fairly conventional terms: the size of its military, the breadth of its economy, the number of embassies carrying its flag. That calculus has not disappeared, but it has been joined, and in some domains overtaken, by a different kind of leverage — participation in the technological architectures, innovation ecosystems and supply chains that now underpin the global economy. The United States still leads in advanced technology and innovation networks broadly. China brings manufacturing scale and a fast-closing technological gap. Taiwan sits at the centre of global semiconductor production. South Korea anchors electronics and digital technology. Japan leads in advanced manufacturing and industrial innovation. Each of these positions functions, in effect, as a form of geopolitical currency, independent of how many countries formally recognise the state that holds it.

Taiwan is perhaps the starkest illustration of this dynamic anywhere in the world. Since the People’s Republic of China took over the UN seat in 1971, Taiwan has been locked out of the vast majority of formal international institutions — it cannot sit as a full member at the UN, and most countries, including India, maintain no official diplomatic ties with it. And yet Taiwan is almost impossible for the global technology economy to ignore. The island is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the firm that fabricates the overwhelming majority of the world’s most advanced chips, the kind that power everything from smartphones to the data centres training the latest AI models. TSMC alone accounted for roughly two-thirds of the global contract chipmaking market by revenue in recent years, and its most cutting-edge nodes are produced almost nowhere else at comparable scale. That single fact gives Taiwan a seat at the table in forums that have nothing to do with formal diplomatic recognition: it participates in APEC under the awkward but functional label “Chinese Taipei,” engages the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement, and works through industry-driven bodies like the World Semiconductor Council and the Government/Authorities Meeting on Semiconductors, which brings together the world’s leading chip-producing economies. Taiwan’s own semiconductor trade association plugs into standard-setting bodies like SEMI and JEDEC and the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation, shaping the technical rules that govern global chip markets from the inside, without ever needing a UN vote to do it. Taiwan’s experience captures a genuinely broader truth in modern international politics: marginalisation in formal diplomacy does not equal strategic irrelevance, when a state holds an irreplaceable role in the technological processes everyone else depends on.

What Each Side Actually Brings to the Table

The India-Taiwan relationship works, to the extent it does, because the two sides bring strikingly complementary rather than overlapping strengths. Taiwan’s trade is heavily concentrated among a handful of major economies — in 2024, nearly a third of its merchandise trade ran through China and Hong Kong, more than 23 percent through the United States, and upward of 13 percent through Japan and South Korea combined, a pattern of deep integration that extends Taiwan’s economic weight well beyond its own geography but also leaves it structurally exposed to concentration risk and to the political volatility of its relationship with Beijing. India, by contrast, offers something Taiwan is chronically short of: market size, broad diplomatic legitimacy, and growing institutional standing across the international system’s main multilateral bodies, even if its own advanced manufacturing and technology base is still catching up.

That asymmetry, rather than being an obstacle, is exactly what makes the partnership useful to both sides. Bilateral trade crossed US$1 billion in 2024 by some counts, and other tallies put the relationship considerably higher — earlier figures show trade climbing from just over US$1 billion in 2001 to roughly US$7.7 billion by 2021 and US$8.5 billion by 2022. That trajectory has seen some recent softening, with a 2.7 percent dip in India’s FY2023-24 trade with Taiwan, but it still marks India out as one of Taiwan’s more significant partners across South and East Asia. In July 2023, the two sides concluded a Mutual Recognition Agreement covering each other’s organic agricultural products, opening a modest but symbolically useful channel for Indian agri-exports like tea and sesame seed into the Taiwanese market — an area officials on both sides see as having real room to grow.

The more consequential development, though, has been in labour mobility. After roughly two years of on-and-off negotiation that resumed in earnest after the pandemic, Taiwan and India signed a memorandum of understanding on migration and mobility on 16 February 2024, concluded not through embassies but through each side’s representative offices — the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, and the India-Taipei Association in Taiwan — the de facto diplomatic channel both countries rely on in the absence of formal ties. The deal was squarely about addressing Taiwan’s demographic crunch: an ageing population and falling birth rate have left the island with persistent labour shortages across agriculture, construction, manufacturing and the care sector, and Taiwanese officials have been particularly interested in recruiting workers from India’s northeastern states, citing closer cultural and culinary affinities as easing the transition. It followed, and built on, Taipei’s 2023 decision to open a third Taiwanese representative office in India, this one in Mumbai, to handle visa services and consular-style assistance across Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh — an expansion of functional diplomatic infrastructure that China’s foreign ministry has criticised, with Beijing arguing that any country maintaining formal ties with the mainland while hosting a Taiwanese representative office undermines the One China principle, a charge India has effectively brushed aside while continuing not to alter its formal diplomatic posture toward Taipei in any way.

Building Multilateral Influence Without a Multilateral Seat

The deeper argument emerging from this relationship is that India and Taiwan do not need to resolve the recognition question to build something that functions like multilateral engagement. Three areas illustrate where that functional cooperation can go further.The first is international standard-setting, an unglamorous but genuinely consequential layer of global governance that determines how technologies actually get built and traded across borders — the technical specifications, interoperability requirements and industry norms that quietly shape entire markets long before any treaty or diplomatic summit gets involved. India and Taiwan could work together here precisely because standard-setting bodies routinely operate on technical merit and industry participation rather than sovereign recognition, giving Taiwan a route to influence it cannot access through conventional diplomacy and giving India a chance to shape rules in a sector where its own capacity is still developing.

The second is supply chain resilience, a priority that has moved from a niche policy concern to a central preoccupation of governments worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how fragile and concentrated global production networks for critical goods, semiconductors chief among them, had become. Taiwan’s dominance in advanced chip manufacturing is both an asset and a vulnerability — a vulnerability sharpened by the geopolitical risk inherent in cross-strait tensions — and India’s push to build its own semiconductor and electronics manufacturing base, through incentive schemes aimed at attracting fabrication and packaging investment, gives the two countries an obvious area of mutual interest in diversifying where and how critical technology components get made.

The third is sector-specific coalitions — informal groupings built around a shared technical or industrial interest that, over time, can acquire real institutional weight even without ever being chartered as a formal treaty body. Cooperation on semiconductor resilience, trusted technology ecosystems, critical infrastructure protection and digital security all offer India and Taiwan ways to shape governance outcomes together, incrementally, without India needing to extend anything resembling diplomatic recognition to do it.

Conclusion

The India-Taiwan relationship will likely never look like a conventional bilateral partnership, and that is, in a sense, the point. Neither Mumbai’s new Taiwanese representative office, nor the labour mobility pact negotiated through back-channel diplomatic proxies, nor a cluster of Indian tech firms working a trade-show floor in Taipei amounts to the kind of relationship that shows up on a traditional map of alliances. But each of these, taken together, demonstrates something genuinely significant about how influence is accumulating in a world where technological capability increasingly rivals, and sometimes outweighs, formal political status. Taiwan’s own experience — locked out of the UN for over half a century yet indispensable to the chips inside nearly every modern device on earth — is the clearest possible proof that systemic relevance and diplomatic recognition have become two separate currencies, convertible into each other only partially and under very specific conditions. For India, deepening ties with Taiwan offers a low-cost, low-friction way to gain a foothold in critical technology ecosystems without disturbing its broader China policy. For Taiwan, India offers scale, legitimacy and a market large enough to matter, at a moment when diversifying away from overconcentration in a handful of partners has become a genuine strategic necessity. What the relationship ultimately illustrates is a template other states without full diplomatic access to key partners might study closely: in a world increasingly organised around technological indispensability, functional multilateralism — built quietly, sector by sector, through labour pacts, trade fairs and standard-setting tables rather than embassies — may turn out to be one of the more durable forms of influence available to states operating outside the conventional diplomatic order.

By : Dhritiman Banerjee, Research Analyst, GSDN

Introduction 

During the early phase of the Cold War, Taiwan was a key partner in the anti-communist alliance, and America had made a security guarantee to the state. However, the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 and the resulting hard calculations of geopolitics made the Nixon administration recalibrate the American vision in East Asia to make Communist China a vital partner in the anti-Soviet crusade. However, the US security guarantee to Taiwan still remained in place to an extent. However, recent developments in the US-China relationship and the increase of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan has increased the importance of American security guarantees to the Island Nation. This article considers the question whether the American commitment to Taiwan still holds. 

US, China and Taiwan: A brief history 

Taiwan is a product of the direct aftermath of the Chinese civil war when the ousted anti-Communist Chinese leaders Chiang Kai Shek fled to Formosa Island and named it Taiwan. The Americans who had supported Chiang during the Civil War continued their support to the newly formed state of Taiwan and in fact refused recognition to Communist China. In fact, early US policy towards Taiwan regarded an invasion of Taiwan as an event demanding a US military intervention to defend Taiwan. In fact, in the 1950s and 60s, China which has always sought to integrate Taiwan into the mainland had military skirmishes with US forces over their aggressive posturing with respect to Taiwan. Opposition to Communism was the hallmark of the Taiwanese regime and therefore the foundation of the American commitment to Taiwan. However, while the US anti-communist commitment heavily influenced its Cold War policy towards Asia, the Vietnam War and its impact on America. The Nixon administration realized that it needed a powerful Asian ally to counteract Soviet policy. Communist China which had a strenuous relationship with the USSR post the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 presented a perfect candidate. Therefore, America revised its policy related to Maoist China and formally recognized Communist China. But American guarantees to Taiwan did not end during the new era. However, the US-Sino alliance was a temporary alliance built for the Cold War and after its end the rapid economic and military rise rise of China posed a direct threat to US hegemony. The US-China rivalry was cemented during President Obama’s pivot to Asia policy and exacerbated during the first Trump administration. These developments coincide with increasing Chinese aggression with respect to Taiwan which raises speculations as to the force behind American support to Taiwan. 

While the Americans have actively sought to balance China in East Asia by forming alliances with states like India, Japan and Australia. US military experts have warned that China control naval access to East Asia and challenge the US Navy in the region in short of all situations short of full-scale war. Secondly, it should be noted that the Iran War has exposed the shortcomings of American military capabilities and therefore, a military conflict with China may not be sustainable for Americans without considerable reforms in military operational planning, readiness and command and control. Thus, the question arises is defending Taiwan beneficial in the security calculus of the United States. 

The current military scenario of the US 

As former national security advisor Henry Kissinger used to say, America does not have permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. The focus on flexible interests over rigid values has been the defining feature of US foreign policy. The second Trump administration has increased this focus and defined the conduct of foreign policy in purely transactional terms whereby America has reduced military support to Europe and has reevaluated its commitment to military alliances like NATO and international organizations like the WHO. President Trump in his second term has also increased his support to Israel and has actively participated in military conflicts in the Middle East. However, his Iran campaign showed the limits of US military capabilities and therefore, he urged his allies to participate in the conflict which they refused and led to questions of reciprocity on US commitments to alliances. In these developments, Taiwan had a very interesting stance. Taiwan stopped short of taking an opinion on the strikes and advocated for global stability. Taiwan has also acted to diversify its energy resources to reduce dependence on the Middle East for petroleum. But US actions in the Middle East and Chinese support of Iran as well as its growing militaristic posture towards Taiwan has raised concerns in Taipei over the will behind Washington’s security guarantee. While Taiwan is a global semi-conductor and AI giant and has advanced resources, it still shares asymmetric capabilities with Communist China which has economic, geographic and military advantages over it. Therefore, Taiwan heavily depends on Washington’s security umbrella for its own security. 

However, public support for military action is decreasing in the US and everyday Americans are heavily criticizing the Trump administration for the inflation caused by the war in Iran and American performance in the conflict. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the US will commit to another foreign war like Taiwan soon. In fact, these developments have also been seen with concern in Taipei. Military analysts in the Island Nation have started to question American commitment to defend the Island Nation from Communist China and have encouraged Taiwan to develop strong indigenous military capabilities and multilateral defence partnerships with other states. Seeing the current domestic scenario regarding war in the US, these concerns are hard to ignore. Also, the US stockpile of missile defence arsenal is rapidly depleting in the conflict against Iran. Therefore, the US capability to defend Taiwan in such circumstances will be called into serious question. Thus, American willingness to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack maybe doubtful unless a situation threatening US sovereignty arises. Americans realize the need to recognize China as a major player in Asia and the limited scope of US military intervention with respect to Chinese actions in East Asia. In such circumstances, if a purely national interest approach to foreign policy is adopted, defending Taiwan just does not add value in terms of the cost-benefit calculation. Therefore, from an American perspective, military intervention to defend Taiwan will be too costly, unviable and unpopular to attempt. It should also be noted that the US Congress also recognizes the problems of defending Taiwan. The Congressional Research Service has increasingly reinterpreted the US-Taiwan relationship as the US requiring resisting a Chinese invasion rather than defending Taiwan. This shows that the US also recognizes the need to increasingly adopt a strategically ambiguous posture with respect to Taiwan rather than having a black and white perspective. Therefore, it can be said that the US recalibration of this relationship is a marker of American intent with respect to Taiwan. 

Conclusion 

It should be noted that while the US may not directly intervene to defend Taiwan, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will certainly involve an American response. The response will most likely be like US support to Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion rather than direct American defence of Taiwan. This is because the US is not ready to engage in a full-scale military conflict with China. While security guarantees to allies hold weight in international politics, such guarantees are not sustainable if they supersede the national interests of the guaranteeing nation-state. Therefore, in this regard it should be noted that purely from a national interest calculus defence of Taiwan will be too costly for the United States to even attempt.