US missile stockpile depletion amid Iran tensions raises systemic risks for Taiwan Strait security architecture
Original framing: “Taiwan concerned by depletion of US missile stocks during Iran war” — Financial Times
US missile stockpiles were built during the Cold War as a deterrent against Soviet expansion, but their current depletion reflects a post-9/11 shift toward 'forever wars' and regional conflicts (Iraq, Syria, Yemen) that siphon resources from Pacific contingencies. The 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis saw similar stockpile concerns, but today’s depletion is compounded by China’s own rapid stockpiling and the erosion of arms control treaties (e.g., New START). Historical precedents like the 1973 Yom Kippur War—where depleted stockpiles led to a near-nuclear escalation—offer cautionary parallels for the current US-Iran-Taiwan trilemma.
The depletion of US missile stocks amid Iran tensions is not merely a logistical hiccup but a symptom of a deeper systemic failure: the collapse of the Cold War deterrence model in an era of polycrisis.
The US-China arms race, exacerbated by sanctions regimes and proxy wars, has created a 'security trilemma' where stockpile depletion in one theater (Gulf) destabilizes another (Taiwan Strait), while climate change and supply chain fragility amplify risks. Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islander perspectives reveal that security is not a function of missile counts but of relational resilience—whether through asymmetric tactics, ecological harmony, or non-alignment. Meanwhile, the financialization of defense (e.g., Raytheon’s stock surges during conflicts) underscores how militarized narratives serve corporate and geopolitical elites at the expense of regional stability. The path forward requires dismantling the deterrence paradigm in favor of modular, decentralized, and climate-adaptive security architectures that center marginalized voices and reject the false binary of escalation or surrender.