TRNN - China the Target of Pentagon’s Massive Military Budget – Horne and Jay

The new Pentagon budget is going to be $760 Billion which they are calling, The Budget for a Better America, and the idea is to keep up with China which is not increasing its annual military budget of $177 Billion in any way at all. So, to keep up with the 'threat of China', the Pentagon budget needs to be six times more than China's even though it is not threatening anyone. China has turned some islands off it's coast into fortresses, but the U.S. says this is a very aggressive threat indeed.

Remember that Adam Ramsay article I put out here, about how the British ruling class were divided into two groups: the industrialists who want to keep its easy access into Europe, and another group, which sees that the big money is to be made in the American military-industrial and financial complex, and so they want to be free of Europe's strict regulations.  The military - industrial and financial complex is a criminal outfit of money laundering, mercenaries companies, drug and gun running, secretive off-shore tax havens, and financial irregularities.

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

The military budget that’s been presented by the Trump administration and the Pentagon, which raises military spending to a pretty much unheard of over 760 billion dollars–and that’s actually, in reality, much more than that because there are certain parts of the defense structure that don’t show up within the Pentagon budget. Many people estimate that even before this rise in military budget, the real military spending was over a trillion dollars. But in any case, this is a significant rise. Patrick Shanahan, who’s the acting Secretary of Defense, has been quoted as telling his staff that when you’re defending the military budget and the logic behind this budget, you only need three words, “China, China, and China.”

This massive military budget is being justified, and in the thinking of the Pentagon is because there’s going to be an inevitable collision between the United States and China. And the answer of the United States is overwhelming military force in order to maintain global hegemony. They may not use the word hegemony, but they use language pretty close to that. In the most recent copy of the magazine Foreign Affairs, the title is “Who Will Run the World? America, China, and Global Order.” And they have various people writing about this.

This isn’t new, the idea that the ultimate geopolitical game is between the U.S. and China. And as I say, the answer of the Empire, American Empire, is to make it such that even in Asia, where China, one would think, would have a certain amount of sway, the United States will not give up its position of what they consider dominance in the region.

Now joining us to talk about this is Gerald Horne. Gerald teaches History at the University of Houston. He’s the author of many books, including Storming the Heavens and The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism. Thanks for joining us again, Gerald.

https://therealnews.com/stories/china-the-target-of-pentagons-massive-military-budget-horne-and-jay

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