Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress at a Thursday hearing that the Pentagon’s 2024 budget request will help the country prepare for a future war with China.
Milley insisted the Pentagon’s massive $842 billion budget request is meant to deter war but said it will also prepare the US military to fight one. He told the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense that deterring and preparing for a conflict “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”
The Pentagon identified China as the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security strategy” in the 2022 National Defense Strategy, and lately, US military leaders have been speaking more explicitly about how they’re preparing for a direct war with China despite the risk of nuclear war. President Biden has also vowed to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
Milley said China’s actions “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States,” echoing similar warnings made by Chinese officials.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned earlier this month that if the US doesn’t change course on its military buildup in the Asia Pacific and other policies aimed at China, it will lead to “conflict and confrontation.” The Pentagon’s budget request will further expand the US military footprint in the region by funding a buildup plan known as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
“This budget includes a 40 percent increase over last year’s for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to an all-time high of $9.1 billion,” Austin said at the hearing. “That will fund a stronger force posture, better defenses for Hawaii and Guam, and deeper cooperation with our allies and partners.”
For China hawks in Congress, what the Pentagon has asked to spend in 2024 is not enough. Including funding for other agencies, President Biden’s military spending request totals $886.4 billion. Congress is expected to add tens of billions more as it did with Biden’s 2022 and 2023 requests.
China isn’t interested in conquering anyone. That’s what the imperialistic U.S. does. China and Russia want to do well economically and the dirty little secret is that on a level playing field the U.S. cannot compete and win economically due to our own stupidity. That’s why we have to fight wars against any country that doesn’t knuckle under to us. Our only export is war.
Yea. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/03/no_author/putin-and-xi-standing-firm-on-the-right-side-of-history/
We also export dollars. But the more that other countries are able to avoid accepting dollars the less war we will be able to export. Hopefully other countries will be able to figure out how to not use dollars.
I have read many wonderful articles but you put it out short and sweet.
This is one that we could lose. Certainly we will get our hair mussed. In the meantime big money to spend.
By hair mussed, you mean tens of thousands of American sailors and soldiers flushed to the bottom of the sea, like the useful but disposable trash our strategists see them as.
Only tens of thousands? Boy are you an optimist.
That’s just soldiers and sailors.
“prepare for a future war with China” – after the recent visit of Chinese delegation to Moscow, situation changed quite significantly. Russia is committed now to defend the integrity of China, including Taiwan. The same as China is committed to help Russia in whatever possible way to defend Russian territory, including the regions which joined Russian Federation in 2022. Russia-China military alliance is a reality now.
That alliance is probably integral to the survival of humanity.
I think it is.
China is like the Seith Lord, they have foreseen the collapse of US and their world reserve currency. Let them prepare all they want. It’s the snake eating more of its own tail.
US people who do not believe Hollywood commissioned CIA/Pentagon budget reality will soon be declared internal enemies of national security.
The Eurasian war against Russia, Iran, and China includes an internal war against US citizens who refuse guvmint brainwashing.
The already have! Read the Twitter Files.
I can see dissidents and Progressives being prosecuted and jailed if the economy crashes and goes South and there are huge demonstrations against the power structure that oppresses our citizens with the Police being the military of the state.
Yes, yet quite a few people on the right don’t much like eternal war either. Progressives voted 100% to fund war against Russia.
Apes!
I’m not so sure that is fair to the apes.
‘Prepare for war with China?????” After their Afghan debacle, how can they talk about war with China with a straight face. More and More our leaders sound like they are high on dementia. They seem to be in urgent need of care locked in a psychiatric hospital away from the levers of power…
They’re deluded into thinking they still run things. The world is changing and the U.S. gov’ment wants to convince us that nothing has changed, they still call the shots. The demented leaders will take us to war to try and hold on to their position but the world sees what the U.S. war regime is about and their desire is to move away from the U.S. dollar based blackmail sanction system. China and Russia will faciliate the move away from the current western based controlled system.
This might actually happen unless the US launches Nukes in which case we all can kiss our ass goodby.We must always remember who is the only nation nto use these horrible weapons. In prisons I understand that people who have committed murder are given space and respect because the theory is if you have done it once there is a good chance you will do it again and so it goes.
Starting with Joe Biden and Donald Trump and a few others I could name.
The Pentagone should not be granted anymore funds till they can reveal exactly how 21 trillion went up in smoke.
Any ordinary business that proven to be as utterly incompetent as the Pentagone would have been foreclosed by it’s creditors by now – however with the Pentagone it’s the other way round – the more they lose and squander on wasteful projects all the more satisfied their creditors appear to be.
I wonder what makes this so.
Could it be that their creditors are major shareholders of the MIC?
That would be wrong.
On a sidenote – The US electorate would do well to elect a government that’s willing to tax the financial elite and that includes the mega corporations instead of borrowing from them and then promising to repay the loan with interests – It should be obvious to anyone with a properly functioning brain that it’s impossible to repay the first loan which is the reason why the US has sunk 32 trillion in debt and why it really needs to tax the top of the financial pyramid.
Least that way the US would not need to pimp its military in order to satisfy the insatiable greed of it’s creditors.
Free Julian Assange.
When you have a Government controlled press that has also created the indoctrination camps known as Gov’ment run schools it’s not that hard to convince the serfs that the U.S. Gov’ment is good and the military needs a blank check to fight all the evil countries out there that hate the U.S. because of ‘our freedom’. War is peace….Orwell.
Orwell is overused. This is creating a system of such incredible cognitive dissonance that the only way to live is to medicate. Everyone is doped to accept the unacceptable. This is Brave New World.
Copious amounts of reefer does it for me.
Me too! I don’t know anyone who isn’t medicated somehow, either pot or anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds or pain killers or Ritalin.
Inhale………..exhale…
You left out number one. As Homer Simpson would say, “My good friend alcohol”.
“The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!”
If the population was not medicated there would be a mass of people in mental hospitals.
And the beauty of reefer is that you can do it when things are acceptable too and you still feel better.
It is Capitalism baby. The legal weed sells for 300 or more an oz.Anyone can buy really good weed on the street for $125 or less.
Yea, it seems though that the society that is be foisted upon us is a combination of Orwell and Huxley.
The foxes are in charge of the henhouse,
Which government controlled press?
The MSM is privately owned, or is there something that I missed?
Yea reality. You obviously haven’t been paying attention to the reports of the collusion between the Government and big social networks like Twitter and Facebook and how the Gov’ment with the F.B.I pushed them to censor and therefore control comments on the platform concerning Covid, Hunter Biden and anything else that went against the approved narrative. Would you call that a ‘Free Press’ run by a private companies?
Neither part of the wishful thinking you propose will happen as long as Capitalism and Imperialism are the law of the land. Expecting our bought and paid for Public Servants to destroy their feathered nest is delusional.We need a from the ground up social and political revolution to survive. Does anyone see that coming?
China seems to be learning how to deal with Biden.
Biden threatens. Xi entices. Biden destroys. Xi builds.
China can and does offer Taiwan a long list of benefits that Biden cannot match. Biden can only offer dubious guarantees of protection from an invasion that he himself is trying to provoke. Hopefully, the people of Taiwan will see this clearly.
If the KMT party returns to power, Taiwan may be able to get back to the way things were BB (Before Biden).
You forgot about buying the leadership of a nation so that they don’t get a real choice. Because democracy!
Dumbocracy?…
I hope BB doesn’t end up being Before the world was Blown up.
What’s the point of a Pentagon “budget”? Congress might as well just give them unlimited money at this point to do more murder and mayhem. End the military industrial complex!
FFC
“”…..the (pentagon) budget is meant to prevent war….””
oh good one!
Add another $200 billion to the $1 trillion budget. Anyone else you want to war with, Lloyd? Should we just round this number to $1.5 trillion, just in case someone else pops up?
There are hordes from Eswatini threatening Oxnard and other such places…
We’ll always have Eurasia.
I’m not prepared to kiss my a– goodbye…
No need for China to go to war with USA. They are buying the ountry as we speak thanks to FJB?Doesn;t the Chinese military have more soldiers than the entire population of the USA?
The numbers of soldiers,ships and planes will not matter if Nukes are involved.
I can recall a time when our military still had a sense of honor and proportion. Now they’re just pigs at the trough.
I hear ya. But I think our perception of the past has been distorted given how god awful things are now. I’d have a hard time using the adjectives you used at any point of my life. Even when I was in. Or, I should say, especially when I was in.
so instead of receiving 50% of discretionary income, the military will now get 100%.
We have two choices in life, prepare for war or be at war. The general has spoken. It is now gospel and that $886 billion just turned into $950 billion.
There is a word for that but I cannot remember WTF it is. ROBBERY?
…”Prepare for war with NUCLEAR CHINA?”
Who are the BOZOS on this bus?…………………………………….
I just don’t get how anyone in this nation can read the news, even the captured press, and not be stunned by how evil the US is becoming. Next we’ll be reporting about how China’s attempts to prepare for our stated goals of warring on them to bring them into national slavery is more reason to prepare for war…
….All while we have the world on the Brink with Russia, and our rules based system of capitalism has the world on the brink of environmental and financial collapse. IF everything goes right, the USA will continue to dominate the world through control of (carbon based energy). If everything goes right, we wind up back at killing the world with the status quo within decades.
This government is literally spending billions getting ready to fight an apocalypse of choice to preserve a system that is openly trying to destroy our own job market and purposefully plunge millions of Americans into desperation and poverty, because inflation (from our current busted war) is costing the rich too much of their amassed wealth.
I’m with you ZM, definitely.
This comment is an amazing prognosis of what is and going to happen very soon.
On the 20th anniversary of the illegal Iraq war we see “Axis of Evil” revived by the US.
The USA is always preparing for war against someone. The interesting thing is that, I never hear of someone preparing for war against the USA.🙄
Then why do Russia and China have big armies, thousands of nukes and develop hypersonic missiles? I guess is just for show.
Please stick to the actual discussion. It’s not about who and who dosen’t have a large military with nuclear capability. It’s about who can’t seem to think about anything other than going all over the world to fight immigianary monsters.
But first be sure that all military personnel have gone through sensitivity training including gender affirming classes so that when a bullet or bomb from the Chinese military kills a soldier, marine, etc., at least the U.S. can find solace in the fact that the U.S. military had the right pronoun for the dead.
The American bull is dead, and now the decapitation begins
Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare for Capitulation to China
With the Biden administration, the neocon permanent war theory is on. Not since the W. Bush-Cheney administration has the U.S. government discarded international law so openly and has turned the U.S. into a rogue state.
The next decade is going to be hell on earth for many peoples.
It will be like walking to hell with one’s eyes wide open.
There won`t be any direct war with China or Russia , one , the US would not have air superiority without it the US Military is all but useless two , the folks back home in the US and all NATO countries will be very upset when the body bags begin to come home by the plane load , Vietnam anyone ? , three , Europe hasn`t the stomach for WW3 having been destroy TWICE in WW1 / WW2 , it will be yet another proxy war with Taiwan being the excuse.
So if we don’t want a war with China we don’t need to budget that much fake money to it. How about that?