U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping react as they hold a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Busan, South Korea, October 30, 2025.
After two months of conflict with no end in sight, Former Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel says that the U.S. is now “poorer,” “less safe,” and “more vulnerable” to its adversaries. His comments were posted along with an article from the New York Times that details how the war has drained stockpiles of “critical, costly weapons.”
“It is difficult to come to any other conclusion,” writes Stengel, “than that this admin's war in Iran has made America less safe and more vulnerable in regard to much more powerful potential adversaries like China. The diminution of expensive and hard to replace munitions is also making us poorer: spending estimates of the war so far are over $30 billion. Iran's military budget, by the way, is 1% of ours.”
Stengel is basing his assertion on some striking numbers. In just two months, the U.S. has fired some 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles intended for a war with China, which represented about half the American stockpile. It’s used over 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, which is ten times what it buys in a year. More than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles have been fired at a price of $4 million each. And these and other weapons had to be rushed to the Middle East from Asia and Europe, which has “left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China.”
At the same time, while the U.S. has been burning through billions of dollars worth of multimillion-dollar weapons, Iran is using an asymmetric strategy that is exceptionally cheap by comparison.
“A Patriot missile costs between $4 and $4.5 million. An Iranian drone costs about $30,000-50,000,” noted Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) at a recent hearing. “It’s like shooting Ferraris at frisbees. We cannot match this asymmetrical warfare, and we can never make enough of these defensive munitions.”
In Europe, reports the New York Times, “the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of NATO from Russian aggression… But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia,” where the movement of forces and resources from the South China Sea has provided a strategic boon to China and North Korea.
During a Tuesday Senate hearing on the matter, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, acknowledged the issue of stockpile shortages by admitting that “there are finite limits to the magazine.”
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