Seth Jones, President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Defense and Security Department, is worried about our ability to deter war with the People’s Republic of China.

[M]y colleagues and I led members of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in a simulation of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The goal was to understand how the US defense industrial base would perform in a protracted war with China and to assess the implications for deterrence. The results weren’t reassuring.
The simulation began with a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026. Both sides suffered heavy losses, but the US defense industrial base was severely stressed. The US military spent its entire inventory of Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles by the end of the first week and ran out of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range missiles after a month.

Running out of critical ammunition in the middle of a war means we no longer even can fight that war. With the PRC well aware of that likelihood, Jones is correct that we’re losing our ability to deter the PRC.

It’s much worse than that, though, and it’s surprising that Jones didn’t take the next step in his analysis. Such a military strait means we’re losing our ability to defeat a PRC attack, and unlike Japan after its devastating attack on us at the outset of our participation in WWII, the PRC has the wherewithal and the will to follow up its initial attack(s), win outright the war—proximately over the Republic of China, but really a proxy war against us—and impose its will on us.