The Pentagon Wants Allies to Do More in the Indo-Pacific — But Can They?

Elbridge Colby stood on the main stage of the Munich Security Conference last Saturday and told European leaders what the Pentagon has been saying privately for months: the United States is refocusing on the first island chain, and allies need to carry more of the burden. Washington wants "collective strength" to deter China, Colby said — strength built with allies, not just American firepower. It sounded reassuring. It also sounded like a plan that assumes capabilities the allies don't actually have yet.

Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, laid out what the administration is calling the "first island chain focus" — a geographic line from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines that defines where the U.S. military will concentrate forces to deter a Chinese move on Taiwan or elsewhere in the Western Pacific. The premise is straightforward: if Europe takes primary responsibility for conventional defense against Russia, the U.S. can shift resources eastward and lean on Indo-Pacific allies to share the load.

The problem is that "sharing the load" requires those allies to field the ships, aircraft, missiles, and sustainment capacity to hold Chinese forces at risk across a theater stretching more than 2,000 miles. Right now, they can't.

The First Island Chain Math Doesn't Add Up

Start with the numbers. The People's Liberation Army Navy operates approximately 370 combat vessels, including destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and submarines. The U.S. Navy has around 295 deployable ships. Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force fields 47 major surface combatants and 22 submarines. South Korea has 12 destroyers, 13 frigates, and 18 submarines. Australia operates 11 major surface combatants. The Philippines has effectively zero blue-water capability.

On paper, that looks like a combined allied fleet of roughly 400 ships facing China's 370. But that comparison ignores three inconvenient realities: distance, readiness, and rules of engagement.

Distance matters because only a fraction of allied ships can be forward-deployed at any given time. Japan's fleet is mostly concentrated in home waters. South Korea's navy is oriented toward the Korean Peninsula, not the South China Sea. Australia's ships are based thousands of miles from the likely flashpoints. Even with pre-positioning and agreements in place, getting allied forces into contested waters in the opening hours of a crisis is a logistics problem that hasn't been solved.

Readiness is the second issue. Anyone who's served on a destroyer knows the difference between "commissioned" and "ready to fight." The U.S. Navy's readiness rates have hovered around 70 percent in recent years. Allied navies face similar or worse constraints. Maintenance backlogs, crew shortages, and aging platforms mean that a significant portion of those allied ships won't be available when it counts.

And then there's the question no one in Munich wanted to answer: will those allies actually commit forces in a Taiwan crisis? Japan has constitutional constraints on offensive operations. South Korea's government has explicitly refused to commit to defending Taiwan. Australia's new defense minister hedged when asked in January whether Canberra would join a U.S.-led response. The Philippines lacks the capability to contribute anything beyond access to bases.

Industrial Capacity Is the Real Constraint

Colby's pitch in Munich included a push for allies to increase defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP — what the administration is calling the "new global standard." South Korea committed first. Japan has signaled it will move toward 3 percent. Australia is considering a similar increase. But money doesn't translate into combat power overnight, and the industrial base to absorb that spending doesn't exist yet.

The Virginia-class submarine program, which the U.S. is supposed to transfer boats from for AUKUS, is running 12 to 18 months behind schedule. Japan's destroyer construction pipeline is maxed out. South Korea's defense industry is ramping up production, but much of that capacity is going to backfill stockpiles sent to Ukraine. The idea that allies can suddenly field the anti-ship missiles, air defense systems, and munitions stockpiles needed for a sustained conflict in the Western Pacific assumes a defense industrial surge that hasn't started yet.

Colby emphasized in his Munich remarks that "modern conflicts are going to be wars of production" and that the U.S. is pursuing a "historic attempt to overhaul our defense industrial base." He's right about the diagnosis. The problem is that the timeline for building that capacity — shipyards, missile production lines, ammunition plants — runs in years, not months. And if the allies are supposed to carry more of the burden, their industrial base needs the same overhaul.

The Strategy Rests on Assumptions That Don't Hold

There's a logic to the Pentagon's plan: NATO 3.0 frees up American resources for the Indo-Pacific, and allied burden-sharing makes first island chain defense sustainable. But the strategy only works if three assumptions hold: that allies can generate the necessary forces, that they will commit those forces in a crisis, and that the industrial base can support sustained operations.

None of those assumptions are solid right now. Japan's military is capable but legally constrained. South Korea is focused on the peninsula. Australia is geographically distant and politically uncertain. The Philippines lacks capacity. And the defense industrial base across the alliance is nowhere near ready for the kind of high-intensity, munitions-intensive conflict that a Taiwan scenario would demand.

Colby told his Munich audience that the administration is "in the delivering-results-and-readiness business, not the cheap-talk business." That's a fair criticism of previous strategies that promised more than they delivered. But readiness requires more than speeches about collective strength. It requires ships, missiles, stockpiles, and allies who are both capable and willing to fight. Right now, the first island chain defense plan has more of the talk than the readiness.

The Pentagon can refocus all it wants on the Indo-Pacific. That doesn't change the fact that the allies it's counting on to share the burden aren't ready yet. And if a crisis comes before they are, "collective strength" will turn out to be a concept, not a capability.