Is Washington Still Capable of Playing the Role of the World’s Policeman?
Despite efforts to accelerate missile production, industrial bottlenecks are threatening the United States’ ability to deter adversaries or fight simultaneous conflicts on multiple fronts against major powers such as China and Russia.
The U.S. war against Iran has not only exposed the limits of Tehran’s military power; it is also beginning to reveal a more sensitive problem for the United States itself: does Washington have enough advanced munitions to sustain a prolonged war or deal with more than one front at the same time?
The Wall Street Journal raised this question in an extensive report entitled “Is America Still Capable of Maintaining the World Order?”, noting that the war has depleted critical stocks of interceptor missiles and long-range weapons and has prompted U.S. allies to question Washington’s ability to fight multiple conflicts simultaneously.
This does not mean that the U.S. military has become weak or that Washington has run out of weapons. Rather, the war has exposed a gap between America’s ability to possess highly sophisticated weapons and its ability to produce them at the speed at which they could be consumed in a large-scale conflict.
According to sources cited by Reuters, U.S. forces consumed “almost all” of their global stockpile of ATACMS and PrSM long-range missiles during the first five months of the war, as well as roughly half of their global stockpile of Tomahawk missiles.
These missiles, some of which cost millions of dollars each, allow the United States to strike distant targets without exposing pilots to danger.
According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the United States has used approximately 65% of its Patriot missile stockpile since the beginning of the war, reducing the number from roughly 2,330 missiles before the conflict to fewer than 1,000. Meanwhile, the U.S. stockpile of THAAD ballistic-missile interceptors has declined by around 38%, to between 234 and 278 missiles.
The danger posed by this depletion lies in the very nature of these weapons.
An interceptor missile is used to destroy an incoming enemy missile, meaning that the United States may have to launch two or more interceptors to neutralize a single target, while an adversary can produce missiles or drones at a much lower cost.
The Wall Street Journal points to an even broader problem: the gap between the speed at which adversaries can produce missiles and the speed at which the United States can manufacture interceptors, at a time when Washington could potentially face conflicts in the Middle East, Europe and Asia simultaneously.
The administration of President Donald Trump is attempting to address the problem by rebuilding the U.S. defense industrial base.
On August 17, Washington signed a $22.9 billion contract with Raytheon to increase Tomahawk missile production from approximately 60 missiles per year to more than 1,000 annually.
The Department of Defense has also announced agreements aimed at doubling or even multiplying several times the production of components for Patriot and THAAD missiles. These measures include a plan to triple Patriot PAC-3 missile production capacity and quadruple THAAD production.
The problem, however, is that building new manufacturing facilities does not mean that missiles will become available immediately. The Department of Defense gave defense contractors 21 days to submit plans for increasing production and accelerating deliveries, warning that development and production cycles lasting several years are no longer acceptable.
The CSIS estimates that delivery of a Patriot PAC-3 missile can take approximately 42 months, compared with around 53 months for a THAAD missile.
For Washington, these figures pose a strategic dilemma.
If the United States depletes its air-defense missile stocks in the Middle East, this could affect its ability to protect its forces in the Gulf or assist its allies in Europe and Asia.
Ukraine provides a clear example.
The war with Russia has already depleted Western air-defense stocks, while Kyiv needs Patriot missiles to counter Russian strikes.
At the same time, the United States could face a crisis around Taiwan in the future if a conflict with China were to erupt, a scenario that would require vast quantities of long-range missiles and air-defense systems.
The Wall Street Journal has warned that the war with Iran complicates Washington’s plans for dealing with any potential confrontation over Taiwan.
More concerning is the fact that the United States’ potential adversaries do not necessarily face the same problem.
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are capable of producing large numbers of missiles and drones, whereas the American model relies more heavily on highly complex, expensive weapons that take a long time to manufacture.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration rejects describing the situation as a crisis.
The Pentagon maintains that the U.S. military remains the most powerful in the world and has sufficient resources to carry out the operations requested by the president. Trump also maintains that American defense companies are producing munitions at unprecedented rates.
But the war with Iran raises a different question: the issue is not whether America can win a battle, but whether it can sustain a prolonged war.
Military power is measured not only by the number of aircraft and ships or by the sophistication of missiles, but also by a country’s ability to replenish the munitions it consumes.
Perhaps this is the key surprise revealed by the war with Iran: the United States does not lack the world’s most powerful weapons, but it faces a growing challenge in producing enough of them at the speed that a major war could require.
That makes the question posed by the Wall Street Journal much broader than the issue of stockpile depletion alone: if a war with Iran has already depleted a significant portion of certain U.S. arsenals, what would happen if Washington were forced to fight a simultaneous war against a major power such as China or Russia?
