New Studies Question Whether the United States Could Sustain a War With China

A set of new studies questions a basic assumption behind American power: whether the United States could supply and sustain a long war with China. The South China Morning Post reported that while the United States can launch stealth bombers across continents and track missiles from space, analysts increasingly doubt that its munitions stockpiles and production lines could endure a protracted conflict in the Pacific.

The concern is concrete rather than abstract. The same interceptor and missile shortages now visible in Ukraine and the Middle East, where Western production trails demand, point to a defense industrial base that struggles to refill stocks consumed in even limited fighting. A war with a peer adversary would draw down precision weapons far faster than factories can replace them.

The reports land as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary and as China continues a documented expansion of its land-based nuclear and conventional forces. The assessments do not predict a war, but they recast the question from whether America can win a first exchange to whether it can keep fighting after one.