Cliff Sims Criticizes Argument that U.S. Resolve on Ukraine Will Deter China from Invading Taiwan

Former top Trump administration official and U.S.-China Commission Commissioner Cliff Sims on Thursday during a hearing on China pushed back against the argument that U.S. resolve to support Ukraine matters more than U.S. military capacity in terms of dissuading China from invading Taiwan.

During the hearing, Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise, head of the China Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), recommended U.S. continue to provide weapons for Ukraine — even if it meant sending the same weapons that Taiwan also needed to deter and win in a military conflict with China.

Sims, a former Deputy Director of National Intelligence, questioned the logic:

How do you view the tension between sending more support for Ukraine sending a message to China, and the possibility of that support stretching the U.S.’s limited capacity and therefore making us more vulnerable?

In other words, is there not a very real chance that demonstrating resolve in Ukraine today could undermine our physical capacity to respond to a Taiwan crisis tomorrow because they might assess that we would respond – that we have the resolve to respond – but actually physically couldn’t respond?

Kivlehan-Wise argued that the Chinese government was observing U.S. actions on supporting Ukraine and judging whether the U.S. is capable of sustaining forces in a protracted conflict and believes if the U.S. cannot, China would have more staying power in a conflict over Taiwan.

“I would emphasize that the PRC is right now observing U.S. actions and discussions with regard to support for Ukraine, and using that to make a judgment about whether or not the U.S. is capable of sustaining forces in a protracted conflict. This judgment that they’re making does affect their decisions on whether or not they believe they would succeed in a conflict with Taiwan,” she responded.

Sims asked her specifically what she was seeing on Chinese open source forums about the U.S. sending weapons to Ukraine that Taiwan would also need to counter Chinese forces, such as ATACMS, Javelin, Patriots, Stingers and other missile systems.

Kivlehan-Wise repeated that the Chinese are discussing U.S. ability to sustain support to Ukraine as a “critical measure” of whether the U.S. would have staying power in the event of a Taiwan conflict.

Sims then asked if the Chinese were putting more of a priority on U.S. resolve to support Ukraine versus capacity to support Taiwan. Kivlehan-Wise said the Chinese were judging “both.”

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Sims asked how the Chinese assessed U.S. capacity to support Taiwan.

Kivlehan-Wise repeated that the Chinese were “watching events that are unfolding in Washington right now and that’s informing their decisions.”

Sims again questioned her about U.S. resolve to support Ukraine versus having diminished capacity to support Taiwan. Kivlehan-Wise again said the Chinese were looking at “both” the resolve and the capacity to support a protracted conflict.

Sims tried once again to pin her down on an answer of which mattered to China more.

“I’m just trying to follow the logic that they would assess that our capacity is not diminished by helping Ukraine when the exact things that Taiwan needs are the exact things we are providing to Ukraine and therefore our capacity to provide them to Taiwan is diminished,” he saiid.

Kivlehan-Wise said “presumably” the Chinese were assessing how the U.S. defense industrial base was responding to the need to provide arms to Ukraine and that supporting that need “may” put the U.S. in a better position to produce more arms in the future.

Sims concluded by saying:

I guess my view on this is simply that, if I was to take this back to an old kind of high school locker room analogy: The loudest person in the room is usually the weakest person in the room. And symbolic shows of support and resolve, compared to capacity to actually deliver on assurances that we have given Taiwan… I think one is more important than the other. And so I have a hard time believing that the Chinese are that heavily weighting resolve over capacity when they’re making that assessment.

The panel was on the topic of “countering China’s military strategy” in the South China Sea.

Kivlehan-Wise’s employer, CNA, is funded by the U.S. military and its analysis is influential in informing U.S. military preparedness.

According to a recent Foreign Affairs article, there is significant overlap in the weapons needed by Ukraine and Taiwan to fight off aggressors Russia and China.

The article said although the weapons the U.S. would need to defend an “initial air and sea assault” by China on Taiwan are different than the weapons being sent to Ukraine, once Chinese forces were on Taiwan, the weapons would be same.

“These weapons include a variety of missiles and missile systems, such as ATACMS, Javelins, Patriots, and Stingers. Thanks in part to Ukrainian demand, their supplies are increasingly limited,” it said, adding:

There are already signs of competition between Taiwan and Ukraine over certain assets. In 2022, for instance, Taiwan had to buy additional HIMARS—a multiple rocket launcher—to compensate for delays in Paladin mobile howitzers, a weapon the United States provided to Ukraine.

It continued: “Increasingly, the arms Washington and its allies are sending to Ukraine are the very ones Taiwan wants most: not just HIMARS but also Abrams tanks, F‑16 fighter jets, and ATACMS. The backlog in delivery of U.S. weapons to Taiwan—which has grown to over $19 billion—predates Russia’s invasion, but Western support to Ukraine has exacerbated the problem.”

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