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Originally Posted by Raellus
Those are all good points, Heffe. To play devil's advocate here, I would argue that what you've identified actually gives China reasons to attempt reunification by force right now, while the West overextends itself in Ukraine.
The US and its allies are funneling much of their defense production into arming Ukraine, and rebuilding their own rather moribund conventional militaries after decades of "peace dividend" draw-downs. Quite simply, the US and its allies can't supply both Ukraine and Taiwan simultaneously. As I mentioned up-thread (including links to the 60 Minutes and Atlantic stories referenced earlier), Taiwan has still not received shipments of American weapons (IIRC, these included Javelin ATGMs and Stinger MANPADS) they ordered and paid for before the Russian invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago. Why? Because those weapons were sent to Ukraine instead. Taiwan's not getting stronger, ATM. Now would be the time to strike.
That said, perhaps the above is a strong argument for why China won't invade Taiwan anytime soon (or in 2025). If they were going to do it, around about April of 2022, or since, would have been the time to do it- when the West's eyes and pocketbooks were focused squarely on a hard-pressed Ukraine. To play devil's advocate, perhaps the PRC is waiting until the West sends even more military hardware to Ukraine to make its move. I imagine Beijing far prefers Javelins, HIMARS, and possibly even F-16s going to Ukraine rather than to Taiwan.
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The delays on Taiwanese deliveries started before the Russian invasion and include items that haven't been provided to Ukraine, such as F-16 and Reaper. For items like Javelin and Stinger, the delays are still unrelated because Ukraine has received old missiles through draw-downs of inventory while Taiwan's delayed deliveries are for new production - they don't want old missiles with limited shelf life. Meanwhile, defense
production hasn't been a significant source of supply for Ukraine. Since 2014, less than 5% of US deliveries to Ukraine have been new production. That will likely increase in the future as reserve stocks dry up, but it's not a significant factor now and isn't a factor in delivery delays to Taiwan.
Even where there is overlap in items ordered and keeping in mind they're coming from different sources of supply, only 1/3 of what Taiwan has ordered since 2015 (by dollar value) has had similar items delivered to Ukraine. That's $7 billion out of $21 billion, and nowhere near the $19 billion in late deliveries. The shortfall was already $14 billion before Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is not a significant factor in Taiwan's delays. Even if every single dollar of the increase since Russia's invasion were directly attributable to aid to Ukraine (it's not), it would be only 25% of the amount in arrears. Given that they're mostly drawing from different sources of supply and ordering different equipment, it would be amazing if more than a couple percent of Taiwan's delays could be attributed to material being transferred to Ukraine.
Taiwan's delays are unfortunately normal for arms deliveries from the United States. Between 2012 and 2021, for all Foreign Military Sales customers the average time between order and delivery was 2.5 years for missiles, 3.5 years for aircraft, and 4 years for air defense systems. These are similar to the timeframes that Russian or Chinese customers face for high-end systems - they can deliver rifles quickly, but not S-400 SAMs.