With US foreign policy increasingly focused on Asia to counter Chain, the US military’s command in the region is looking for more money. In a new report delivered to Congress on Monday, US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) calls for about $27 billion in additional spending between 2022 and 2027, so it can better confront Beijing.
The report, prepared by INDOPACOM chief Adm. Philip Davidson, is similar to a proposal the command issued last year, although it has some key changes. Last year’s report was required by what is called the Pacific Deterrent Initiative (PDI), which was included in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The PDI was also included in the 2021 NDAA. It was inserted into the military spending bills to ensure INDOPACOM has what it needs to counter Beijing and fulfill the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which outlines the military’s shift away from counterterrorism in the Middle East towards so-called “great power competition” with Russia and China.
This year’s report renewed INDOPACOM’s call for a $1.6 billion dollar air defense system at the US military base in Guam. The Guam defense system requires a $200 million radar system in Pulau and $2.3 billion of space-based radars.
Another notable proposal from the report includes a $3.3 billion ground-based long-range missile system to make up ‘highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain.’ The First Island Chain is a chain of islands that includes archipelagos near Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
The INDOPACOM report comes as the Pentagon is reviewing its posture in Asia and the military’s overall China policy. The review is being led by Ely rather, a China hawk who was appointed to advise Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Asia matters. Since President Biden came into office, multiple US warships have sailed into the South China Sea and through the Taiwan Strait, stoking tensions with Beijing.
This is another Black Hole for the Pentagon to throw money in for no good reason. All they can do is watch China and Russia build out the BRI the Maritime BRI and the Polar Trade Route.
China is showing commendable restraint in the face of US provocations, but cannot be expected to last for ever. An alliance between Russia and China in the not to distant future will become inevitable.
The alliance is unwritten. Neither will stand aside if and when the other is attacked, and all efforts to keep the war from US soil will fail.
>There’s something magic about $27B. . . .and China is just as bad as Russia!!
The European Deterrence Initiative: A Budgetary Overview
EDI. . .$27.1B. . .here
>Ely Ratner, a China hawk, has zero education, training and experience to head an anti-China military task force. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Prior to joining CNAS he served on the China Desk at the State Department as the lead political officer covering China’s external relations in Asia. . .Wow. . .The Pentagon will tell this young man what they want and that will be the plan.
Fuck em … If there isn’t enough in the 3 billion or so that the Pentagon rapes us for every day, then this bastard will have to wait.
I wonder if we ever will try to take Rodney King”s advice- “Can’t we just get along?”
No money in getting along..
re: “. . . multiple US warships have sailed into the South China Sea”
The big concern to China is not the feeble FONOPS in the South China Sea, rather it is the US Navy sailing in China territorial waters while claiming that they have an unfettered right to do so, and of course they don’t.