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It’s not often we can look to corporate mainstream media for facts on Foreign Policy. This one must have slipped through the CIA filter.

Welcome to the new age of bloated Pentagon budgets, all to be justified by the great Chinese threat.

My take: pic.twitter.com/3c71EjFxiH

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) March 21, 2021

Washington Post Opinion : Opinion: The Pentagon is using China as an excuse for huge new budgets

Opinion by

Fareed Zakaria

Columnist

March 18, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. CDT

“On the eve of his visit this week to Asia, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin outlined his key concern. “China is our pacing threat,” he said. He explained that for the past 20 years, the United States had been focused on the Middle East while China had been modernizing its military. “We still maintain the edge,” he noted, “and we’re going to increase the edge going forward.” Welcome to the new age of bloated Pentagon budgets, all to be justified by the great Chinese threat.

What Austin calls America’s “edge” over China is more like a chasm. The United States has about 20 times the number of nuclear warheads as China. It has twice the tonnage of warships at sea, including 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers compared with China’s two carriers (which are much less advanced). Washington has more than 2,000 modern fighter jets compared with Beijing’s roughly 600, according to national security analyst Sebastien Roblin. And the United States deploys this power using a vast network of some 800 overseas bases. China has three. China spends around $250 billion on its military, a third as much as the United States. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution notes that, “if China were in NATO, we would berate it for inadequate burden-sharing, since its military outlays fall well below NATO’s 2 percent minimum.”

At the height of its imperial might in the late 19th century, when it ruled a quarter of the world’s population, Britain adopted a “two-power standard” — its navy had to be larger than the next two put together. U.S. military spending remains larger than the defense budgets of the next 10 countries put together, most of which are Washington’s close allies. The United States’ intelligence budget alone — around $85 billion — is larger than Russia’s total defense spending.

And yet the United States never imagines that this kind of spending could ever be seen by other countries as threatening. In requesting even more money for his region, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, remarked on China’s increases in defense spending: “I cannot for the life of me understand some of the capabilities that they’re putting in the field unless it is an aggressive posture.” But the fact that Washington is spending more on the military than it did at the height of the Vietnam War (even accounting for inflation) should threaten no one?

In any case, the size of military spending is a misleading indicator of strength. Far more important are the objectives sought and the political-military strategy used to achieve those objectives. The United States has probably outspent the Taliban 10,000 to 1 in Afghanistan. And yet Washington has been unable to achieve its objective there — ensuring that the Kabul government rules the country uncontested. If the United States defines its goals carefully and assembles an intelligent and consistent political and military strategy to achieve them, it can succeed. Without that, millions of troops and trillions of dollars will not guarantee victory. Bigness is not a substitute for brains.

Consider two contrasting exercises of power. The United States’ F-35 fighter jet program, bedeviled by cost overruns and technical problems, will ultimately cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion. China will spend a comparable amount of money on its Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious set of loans, aid and financing for infrastructure throughout the world, aimed at creating greater interdependence with dozens of countries that are important to Beijing. Which is money better spent?

The Pentagon operates in a realm apart from any other government agency. It spends money on a scale that is almost unimaginable — and the waste is, too. Every government agency is required to audit its accounts, but for decades, the Pentagon simply flouted this law. In 2018, it finally obeyed, paying $400 million for 1,200 auditors to examine its books, yet it still could not get a clean bill of health. As writer Matt Taibbi noted in a brilliant 2019 exposé of Pentagon accounting, the auditors “were unable to pass the Pentagon or flunk it. They could only offer no opinion, explaining the military’s empire of hundreds of acronymic accounting silos was too illogical to penetrate.” The Defense Department has failed to pass two more audits since then.

Having spent two decades fighting wars in the Middle East without much success, the Pentagon will now revert to its favorite kind of conflict, a cold war with a nuclear power. It can raise endless amounts of money to “outpace” China, even if nuclear deterrence makes it unlikely there will be an actual fighting war in Asia. Of course, there might be budget wars in Washington — but those are the battles that the Pentagon knows how to win! “

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for the Atlantic.Follow

More information on US arsenal, bases and spending :

My Thoughts on Militarism: My words at the Good Noise, Good Neighbors Festival Oct 20, 2019

We don’t need the jets. We don’t need the base.

I served for 13 years in the US military, including 9 years here at Truax Field with the 115 Fighter Wing. During my time with the Air Force, I was deployed to the Middle East to combat zones and Southwest Asia five times.

Years ago, President and General Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about the big money of the Military Industrial Complex. Through the years this corruption has gotten worse. Over the past 50 years, big business led by entities like the Chamber of Commerce and ALEC have purchased our legislators.

There are too many lobbyists in our government. A good example of a conflict of interest is the Secretary of Defense who is a former lobbyist for Raytheon. Raytheon makes at least four components of the F-35.

The activist courts have invented law taking away our ability to regulate bribery. With the decisions leading up to Citizens United, we now have a Military Industrial Complex on steroids.

Jimmy Carter and others have stated that the US is now an oligarchy. There are a few wealthy people, the 1%, that our government is serving. [Although, we could change that tomorrow if we had the will.]

Now is the time to talk about how much military assets we have. How much we spend on war and where we want to spend our money.

We don’t seem to be having an effective discussion on these questions. Instead we have propaganda about whether we support the troops or if we love the flag. Those are games being played. Those are not valid, logical arguments relative to the situation.

According to a poll from September, most Americans want more money spent on the domestic needs of people and less spent on the Pentagon.

Defending our homes and our constitution is very important, but we could do that and spend more money on…

More hospitals, clinics, staff, nurses and doctors for veterans and civilians
Clean energy
Giving teachers the tools they need
Art and music funding
Heating assistance and other help for the elderly
Processing refugees in a more humane manner
Dealing more effectively with substance abuse, trauma, mental health and PTSD
Protecting our natural world, our air, our water, our soil

A few numbers…

This is not defense. This is empire.

Some of our children, go to schools where the textbooks are 30 years old and dilapidated, while our government is buying weapons like the F-35 for one hundred million dollars, a jet that has a windshield made of sapphire and has a helmet that cost $400,000.

I think we can have a better balance. Part of that balance is pushing for laws to be enforced instead of bombs dropping so often, and we need a government that is not out there creating enemies for Americans.

Two priorities we should have in order to achieve real progress:
We need people to be involved and informed.
We need to get the big money out and the people in.

Veterans for Peace

Chapter 25

Tag Archives: spending

Stop Using China as an Excuse – CNN’s Fareed Zackaria

My Thoughts on Militarism – Brad Geyer