https://southfront.org/us-boosts-defense-spending-to-what-end/
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One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was the pledge to “rebuild the US military”, and it is one of the few of his initiatives that appears to enjoy broad bipartisan support. The US Senate’s version of the defense appropriations bill provides for what amounts to a dramatic 10% increase in defense spending, or more than even the Trump Administration requested. The bill passed with a strong bipartisan majority and with hardly any debate. There is no reason to expect the House of Representatives will not follow suit. This naturally raises the question: what is behind the sudden interest in boosting US defense spending, after a decade and a half of continuous war?
The official reason for the boost, and one that has some merit, is the sorry state of the US military. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus the various and sundry other operations against Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, not to mention the confrontations with Russia, China, and North Korea, have left the US military stretched thin and demoralized. Much of the Army and Marine equipment pool has incurred significant wear and tear from operating in the hot and dusty Middle East conditions. The air force has been reduced to a collection of on-call bomb trucks supporting land operations. Even the navy, easily the least-engaged of the three services, has had to station carrier battle groups to contribute their airwings to the ground support mission, and thus justify the existence of the costly carrier fleet. The result is a force with significant morale and training problems which manifest themselves in crashing planes and colliding warships.
It is doubtful, however, that Congress is so eagerly “supporting the troops” for the reasons outlined above. As the recent US elections have demonstrated, the US economy’s softness is leading to unpredictable and uncontrollable election outcomes. Moreover, ideological opposition makes public spending extremely difficult to provide, with defense spending being the one solitary exception. The members of Congress are therefore supporting the defense appropriations bill with the expectation it will create jobs in their districts and states. Defense contractors themselves go out of their way to “educate” the legislators of the benefits associated with supporting this bill.
Donald Trump’s own motives likely aren’t all that different. While he campaigned on, for example, a “trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure,” the chances of such a program being passed by Congress are between slim and none. So offering a de-facto trillion-dollar increase in defense spending is the next best thing, as it may well translate into enough jobs in key states to ensure a margin of victory in the 2020 election.
But there is also a deeper sense to this effort, as the US establishment seems to try to re-enact the 1980s. And for a good reason. It was quite literally the last decade of America’s greatness, the last decade in which the country elected a president by a landslide–Ronald Reagan in 1984–and the last decade in which it scored a genuine, unalloyed geopolitical triumph in the form of the collapse of USSR and the emergence of the US as the sole hegemonic power. Therefore it is no surprise that US decisionmakers want to use it as a blueprint for repeating the earlier success.
Indeed, if one looks at the origins of America’s 1980s triumph, it is easy to see similarities between the current policies and US policies of 1970s and 1980s. The prescription for success looks something like this: first, end unpopular costly quagmire wars, retrench, carry out domestic reforms liberalizing the economy, run up national debt through massive deficit spending, pump hundreds of billions of dollars of new spending into a revitalized all-volunteer force benefiting from a technological leap forward, and watch the geopolitical benefits practically reap themselves!
But it’s unlikely this feat can be repeated. There is no next generation of US weapons comparable to the Abrams and Bradley armored vehicles, F-15 and F-16 fighters, or AEGIS destroyers that would provide the US with the sort of qualitative advantage it enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s. It seems highly unlikely the US will be able to extricate itself from the debilitating wars in the Middle East. Trump is no Nixon, he lacks the foreign policy credibility sufficient to persuade the US establishment to accept at least a temporary loss of influence in the Middle East. Most importantly, while Reagan benefited from a stagflationary economy that benefited from liberalization and deregulation, and a low level of national debt, Trump has neither. US economy is suffering from neoliberalism and globalization taken to their logical extremes, not over-regulation or over-taxation. The US national debt is reaching its historic maximums. And, last but not least, China today is an economic powerhouse while Russia’s economy is on a far more sound footing than the Soviet economy was in the 1970s and 1980s.
The danger here is that, aware that the time is not on their side, the US elites may engage in more international adventurism to a far greater extent than Reagan did in Grenada and Lebanon. Unfortunately, there are few indications the US elites have accommodated themselves to the new, post-hegemonic, international balance of power, and the boost in military spending is a reflection of their efforts to recapture past glories. But it is unlikely they can reverse the process of US hegemonic decline. Indeed, this effort actually represents a still-heavier burden on the already weak US economy.
Miss these war criminals?
http://bit.ly/2wA1CWs
I fear that we are back to 2001 – facing a new round of wars, more suffering, death, and destruction on an immensely greater scale. God help us.
@ Arius. That’s an optimist’s take: ‘we are going to see another massive, bloody expansion of US empire’. That is what US hubris thinks. That is what the Napoleon and the Germans thought. Weapons spending, because we (the US) are winding up the next, glorious phase in global takeover.
From the other side of the trenches the perspective is always a little different: the world is gearing up to fight the US on multiple fronts. An once it is under way, there is no return for the US and Zionists.
Hope I am wrong, hope that the US can be walked, complaining, to a respectable position within a multi-polar world, but I don’t think so.
Is Syria really this bad as what this Nick Turse article at TomDispatch.com is saying? I never thought about the refugees from the Second Gulf War.
“Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Disappearance, a Body, and What It Takes to Make the News”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176334/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_a_disappearance%2C_a_body%2C_and_what_it_takes_to_make_the_news/
“The infamous “surge” of more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007 only accelerated the flight of Iraqis from their homes: more than a million of them were displaced within that country, while close to a million more crossed the border into Syria.
“Those Iraqi refugees generally had more money than their Syrian counterparts. With their arrival, schools and hospitals became overcrowded, food prices in Damascus rose 30% and rents 150%. Hard-pressed Syrians moved to run-down neighborhoods in Damascus, finding themselves second-class citizens in their own capital.”
…
“Less than three years later, in March 2011, peaceful protests began after 15 young boys were arrested and tortured — a 13 year-old died — for having written graffiti in support of the Arab Spring. Assad responded with deadly force and, by July, civil war was underway. To date, at least 465,000 Syrians have been killed, one million injured, and 12 million — half the country’s population — displaced like the Iraqis before them.”
…
“As for the U.S.: in 2016, we dropped 12,192 bombs on Syria although we are not officially at war with that country. That’s more than the 12,095 bombs we dropped that same year on Iraq, with which we are no longer at war, and more than we have dropped on any country since the war in Vietnam. …Donald Trump, during his first six months in office, set an all-time presidential record, dropping 20,650 bombs on seven Muslim countries for reasons he did not explain, even as he nearly doubled the number of civilians being killed. And he’s just getting started.”
I forget the source, but an Israeli minister admitted that 3/4 of Israel’s oil imports come from “Kurdistan” from eastern Syria and northern Iraq.
Quite simply, the increase in Offense spending is to benefit the companies involved, it is not for American security, as the F-35 demonstrates, it’s to continue ripping off the taxpayer, while they still can.
The USG and its arrogant satanic claim to be the world’s only superpower, while it goes around the world murdering people with impunity, and stealing resources, will lead to its own downfall, as pride always does.
The US has wasted its wealth by letting criminal – evil – people use it for its own selfish ends.
For Russia and China, Eurasia is the economic and wealthy true superpower with its superior population ratio versus the Americas, by 5:1, which will eventually replace the satanic American PNAC this century.
When I see these “our enemy is a paper tiger” articles I despair- for they prove that the current ‘chattering classes’ on our side are blind fools.
Tony Blair crafted the greatest false flag in Human History, 911- and followed this with the greatest aggressive military alliance in Human History- the combine of nations used to attack Afghanistan and then Iraq. For sure the two targets were pathetic, and the invasions coincided with billions of US dollars spent to buy the loyalty of the most important and powerful figures in each target nation, breaking their resistance from within. But so powerful was Blair’s reach when it came to rallying an alliance of nations, even Russia supported the invasions with its votes at the UN, and even the japanese arrested and prosecuted citizens who dared to engage in anti-war activity.
The US economy is not “weak” but is the greatest this planet has ever witnessed. And it is this way for it demands a ‘tithe’ from every other major nation that does business- so the current economic success of the Far East, for instance, feeds straight back into US coffers. The US ‘debt’ is also an ***illusion***- something you can understand best when you consider the ‘bankrupt’ status of all the West’s major banks a few years back, and how in reality this meant ***nothing*** real at all. Money is an illusion for a nation whose currency is used by the world, and which can print any amount of that currency. America’s ‘debt’ simply means the rest of the world pays for America’s lifestyle, whether it wants to or not. This was the very reason Britain designed Britain 2 (USA) in the first place.
America’s current issue is ***not*** a capability of waging war but a willingness to do so. And by this I mean America needs to engage in full on ruthlessness, without regard to any Human sentiment, if it is to take on Iran. But the USA always waged these wars of extermination in the past- it is only in the years since Vietnam that the idea of ‘humane’ war became an idea due to growing media coverage of the nature of war in the States. But this is a ‘bump’ Trump can just hop over.
What was the greatest concentrated act of mass murder in Human History, for instance? USA’s Highway of Death that probably half of you here have never heard of. A great sea of Humanity peacefully withdrew from Kuwait, most of whom were civilians, for Kuwait had previously employed an astonishing number of ‘slave’ workers – and the Kuwait rulers in exile- in London- had declared that these ‘slave’ workers would be thrown out once America won back Kuwait for their personal use.
But the USA had set a trap for this astonishing migration, and a force of allied murder squads butchered every last Human in an orgy of atrocity never before seen in the planet’s history. The irony was that Russia had been involved in mediation to get Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, and the withdrawal was actually on the back of this- but Russia is Earth’s worst ‘ally’ nation- so any nation relying on Russian support is doomed past the short term as Syria will sadly find out sooner or later.
Anyway my point is that in reality, America has not lost its insane evil ruthlessness in war- it just needs a ‘fig leaf’ to hide it behind, until even that can be dropped. While Americans are cowardly fighters in method (the US army only attacks when it is sure it has at least a hundred-to-one advantage), that method tends to work because America has the overwhelming resources.
In WW2, the “Destroyer of Cities” was the UK/USA combine- and most of these cities were not even military targets. The USA did not hesitate to use nukes on helpless Jap cities ***after*** the Japanese had surrendered, so US scientists could examine in detail the impact of two very different forms of nuclear explosions on real Human settlements. The scientists justified this amazing evil because of the factual widespread experimentation the Japanese had carried out on living Human victims. The British method of world control has always been “whatever it takes- but hide this behind perfect mass media propaganda saying otherwise”.
Now America is on the verge of Total War with Iran, and outlets on our side fill with articles like this one, or the previous one where a supposedly informed Iranian, working for a supposedly significant Iranian media outlet, witters on about the ‘weakness’ of the EU. “Peace in our Time”- we’ve heard it all before from the naive anti-war ‘optimists’, who actually do everything in their power to persuade the people to take their eye of the ball.
I’ve said it many times before. The West has been preparing for war on Iran for many years. New bases have been built all across the Middle East. The UK’s biggest RAF base is now in Saudi Arabia- practising for strikes on Iran by engaing in a war of ruthless destruction in Yemen. ***Veteran Status*** is the greatest ‘level up’ any soldier can have, and British pilots and flight crew/planners work daily on every form of bombing action in Yemen. The press of the UK states that the RAF only provides “technical support” for Saudi pilots, but this is an outright lie.
However there is a ‘semantic trick’ at play. Blair introduced a new law whereby any serving member in the UK armed services can instantly became a ‘mercenary’ for a foreign power (with official arrangement, of course). The government of that foreign power can grant the British ‘mercenary’ temporary ‘citizenship’ that lasts exactly as long as the soldier is engaged in mercenary soldiering. The BBC, for instance, knows this, but describes the pilots bombing Saudi as ‘Saudi pilots’ for the King of KSA grants each RAF pilot such a pretence to allow misrepresentation in the media. I would recommend everyone actually Google’s the rules Tony Blair introduced to allow for ‘instant mercenary’ status for any serving member of the UK armed services, for it was the most game changing play.
Naive fools on our side watch for a build up of ***naval*** power in the Middle East to prove a war is coming- utter and total ***nonsense***. Iran has the unstoppable means to sink any fleet, and the negative impact this would have on the morale of the public in the USA would be unacceptable. No- the ships are going to the region of N Korea in a classic act of ***misdirection***- no war is ever going to happen there since N Korea is a creation of the USA for the benefit of Japan.
No, it is ***ground*** bases that matter in the Middle East, and the Deep State has spent the last decade building bases of unthinkable capacity- in Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in particular. Where ports are involved, this is simply a means of moving simply massive numbers of ground troops. The war on Iran will be the greatest military action since WW2- and far, far more destructive.
Southfront is ***our*** propaganda outlet designed to push the message of Russia power and influence- but actually compared to the USA, outside of nuclear war or a defense of Russia itself, Russia is currently totally insignificant, which is why we see Putin on his knees greeting the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Putin grovels to little monsters for that is the ***only*** way Russia can hope to gain influence in the region.
When the USA declares war on Iran (which apparently will happen by ***default*** when Trump declares the major armed units of the Iranian military to be ‘terrorists’), Russia will be told to “get out of the way”, and Putin will obey. Iran will by totally on its own. Iran will fire a ***lot*** of ground-to-ground missiles, but the West will fire infintely more missiles from all its new bases in the Middle East, and within a week Iran’s first line of defense will be destroyed.
A ground invasion will happen, and sooner rather than later. Look at a map of the region and you’ll see this makes for a ***very*** interesting situation. US use of Turkey, most of Iraq, and Pakistan as a direct staging for the ground invasion is out of the question initially. Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan will be used instead, with troops flooding into these nations from other allied nations in the region that will not allow direct use of their lands, or are wrongly located for the job. Pakistan, for instance, will provide British and US forces with every assistance, but cannot allow Pakistan to be a direct land route for these forces into Iran. Saudi Arabia has no direct land route to Iran, but is ***very** close allowing a short sea hop for the West’s armies, or land routes via Kuwait and the bottom of Iraq.
The coming War on Iran will be another coalition effort- to think otherwise is to be suckered by the zionist press. Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Australia and all the other usual suspects will be part of the Total War alliance. Yes, this time Russia won’t vote in support of the war in the UN, but this time the Deep State ain’t going to the UN for a ‘fig leaf’.
Trump is an ‘odd fellow’- thus his giant smirk and the “calm before the storm” remark. Any other president would have been an ‘insider’ and played the ‘insider’ game where you keep your mouth shut, and wear a ‘poker face’. Trump doesn’t see the need to do this- since what is he giving away? The war is unstoppable- America has the resources and the fellowship of like-minded nations (regardless of what they say in public to their simple-minded voters), Russia is a joke of an ‘Empire’ nation (only prepared to really defend its own direct lands and interests), and Iran is a second world regional power.
Even now most of you are saying “but the people wouldn’t like it, and people hate Trump, and, and, and…”. When Blair was at the height of his ***public*** power (before retiring to run things at a world level behind the scenes), he took Britain to war in the face of the greatest anti-war protest the world had ever seen. And what was Blair’s ‘punishment’- being voted back into power at the very next election by Blair’s anti-war electorate. People punish politicians who ignore them? hahahahahahaha! They see such monsters as ***alphas***.
Trump taking America to War will cement Trump’s power and respect in the USA, not destroy it. And the storm Trump promises is arch-demon Tony Blair’s beginning of the End for Humanity.
PS once Iran goes desperate trying to defend itself in the early days of the War by missile striking everywhere, Trump will settle ‘old scores’ all across the Middle East. This means Trump will bomb Assad into oblivion in Damascus, and flatten Hezbollah centres across Lebanon. And Russia will do ***nothing***- at least not in the Middle East. Russia’s most likely response will be pre-emptive in Europe- possibly invading some of the ex-soviet border states in order to fortify itself against a West that has clearly gone kill-crazy.
Smells like WW3? Well ***that*** is the whole idea. And how do you stop a World War. Well it takes an Empire Power prepared to use any means- including military- to prevent the military actions of the Empire powers that seek to build a road to World War- – like, you know, Russia formally declaring a mutual self-defense treaty with Iran. NATO does this all the time. World’s worst ally Russia never does. Deep State double-agents pretending to be on our side act as apologists for Russia’s policy by saying Russia must never defend any nation against the West- because by doing so it would lead to direct conflict with the USA- see the trick?
Here’s the ***really*** sad thing. Ordinary informed people now accept the war on Iran as inevitable, and thus don’t even care.
Anti-Russian hasbara in the form of another gargantuan word salad. But what took the price hands down here was this:
“No — the ships are going to the region of N Korea in a classic act of misdirection — no war is ever going to happen there since N Korea is a creation of the USA for the benefit of Japan.”
Really, you have to be even nuttier than the neocons to “see the (twi)light” in these doom and gloom fairy-tales of Western invincibility.
I can’t see why Russia would invade the Baltic States.
They are such a s***hole even most of the people who live there have emigrated.
The only reason would be a strategic one, to cut off the supply of Estonian prostitutes to the EU.
Anything is possible but I can’t see a war starting or playing out this way.
Thanks for a very interesting article.
I have done my military service, but I’m not a military specialist. However, I have some sidelines. If I’m seriously wrong, I will rely on corrections, okay?
The eighties. Grenada was an apple pie, but Lebanon was seriously different. The US forces appeared and eventually fled. Lebanon at that time was a hellhole, with about 33 different militias shooting at each other, most of the time not even knowing who they were shooting at. US forces were confronted with suicide bombings like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings . US Navy ships were shelled, they didn’t even know who was doing that.
In that time, Reagan invested heavily in aircraft carriers. The main thought behind it was that the main part of populations in nations around the world, live within a few hundred miles of the coast, reachable with cruised missiles and airplanes, all from large aircraft carriers.
With them, the USA could project it’s will around the globe.
Maybe that’s still valid against nations like Lybia. But not against Iran or the DPRK. They might already be quite capable to sink them. And then I’m not even talking (well, ok, typing) about Russia or China.
There might be another variable at stake: the credibility of the ‘mission’ itself. I’m referring to what I sometimes jokingly tell ‘we already had WW3’, the moments that the US Navy and the RF Navy were opposed to each other on the Syrian coast after a false flag chemical weapon attack.
Putin made a brilliant move with demanding the destruction of all chemical weapons of Syria under the supervision of the UN.
Just before that, something unusual happened. There was mutiny among the US forces, mostly ventilated via social media. The main message was ‘I don’t want to be the airforce of Al-Quada’.
There was no vision, just some ‘let’s bomb them’ idea, without any exit strategy.
I don’t question the loyalty of US military men at all, but I also don’t question their intelligent visions as well.
In a time that the USA lacks easy targets, and the US Navy seems to be overseeing large cargo ships and oil tankers, these kind of adventures may have serious risks. Cheering under the flag may give a warm feeling for some moments, but wait until tens of thousands of body bags come flying in.
Try to sell that. And, having to bind in will have complications too. It will make the US forces look vulnerable. Are they? Well, Vietnam is already forgotten?
I smell trouble ahead when another adventure is started.
I seriously do hope not.
Cheers, Rob
My guess is that trump is looking for a nationwide support , just to avoid his impeachment from a basis of mental faculties flaws.
The logic conclusion would be that boosting weaponry to the moon is a sign of perfect mental sanity.
Just imagine how far that formerly sane country has gone.
My understanding is that foreign policy is now completely out of Trump’s hands and completely decided by the Pentagon and Congress.
Trump’s role now is just to serve as a distraction to most of the bombings going across the world, with the media helping distract the population further by attacking him for obscure or weird or crazy things he says.
@ augusto
‘Trump impeachment ….. from a basis of mental faculties flaws.’?
Where have you been these last 30 years? Nice, warmongering simpleton film stars (Regan), inbred US aristocracy (Bush Mk.1), pedophiles (Clinton), total retards (Bush Mk. II), dodgy bum boy (Obama), and now a pig-human clone experiment gone wrong. The US if nothing if not consistently crap at the top.
Seeing as Trump has a visibly under-shagged beautiful wife, we know for certain he has ‘bedroom issues’. So they can’t get a pedo or adultery lever on him as the deep state have with all previous presidents, because I am sure even a pin cushion would laugh at him in the buff. They have just gone for the other thing he is most desperate to defend – his self image as a genius. Impeachment is the lever they have used to get him in line. And being an coward, he is just where they want him in short order.
Military spending cannot be both a burden and a boon to the U.S. National economy. But there undoubtedly is less bang today than with the 1984 buck. There are opposing forces at play, but Trump is actually more beholden to the international drive toward multi-polarity. Understand his two masters, the Anglo American dollar faction (AADF), and the international banking interests.
Though global banking wants multipolarity, it is otherwise no great friend to Russia. But the AADF is the Russo-phobic deep state snowflake culture – not sure where U.S. military stands, but they can always demoralize the opposition with social media virtue signaling.
Russia and China are on the right course. The greatest threat is – as power shifts, how will it corrupt?
When Trump launched his election campaign, he had the support of 200 admirals and generals. I always wondered why the US military would back a 70 year old man without military and political experience. We now have our answer. They needed a puppet in the White House, who would back the interests of the US Military Industrial Complex. What does that mean ? It means that Wall Street, using the US military, has de-facto created an empire, whose expansion has not been completed. The two chief obstacles are Russia and China, which need to be destabilized and broken up. The former USSR was never the chief target for the US, but the Russian Federation inside it, the largest state. Yes, the USSR did break up, but not the Russian Federation, which is still the largest country in the world, possessing great natural wealth, which Wall Street needs. In trying to destroy Russia and China, the US military has built outside the US 700 combat bases and 300 supply bases. It has also fought numerous wars, whose legality is highly questionable. How much did all of this cost and how much more will it cost ? Empires need huge sums of money to exist. Some American university professors have calculated that the combined US foreign and domestic debt in December of 2014 was 222 trillion dollars, while one analyst has stated that in January of 2017 the total US domestic debt was one quadrillion dollars, if such a thing is possible at all. The point is that at this moment the US is in huge difficulties. It has not completed its empire building, and it has trouble controlling what it has, as was inevitable. It’s foreign and domestic debt cannot be payed off, while the dollar is printed in huge amounts backed by nothing. Worse, Russia and China have concentrated on improving their infrastructure and are preparing to introduce gold backed rubles and yuans (according to one analyst, both have more than 25,000 tonnes of gold each). When this happens, the US dollar will be discarded as the world reserve currency, a heap of dollars will return to the US, as nobody will want them any more, and the US military will find it impossible to hold on to their foreign bases, which will be abandoned, as there wont be any more real money for the expenditures. The empire will collapse, as did the Roman Empire. As for the US, it will, according to one analyst, be reduced to a third world country. One third of the labor force is already unemployed. That’s the price you pay for empire building.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/why-trumps-support-from-military-leaders-isnt-that-impressive/498806/
article says that Trump had the support of 88 retired admirals and generals
….but Romney had the support of a whopping 500 retired admirals and generals? WTF???
Trump did indeed have the support of 200 admirals and generals, retired and in active service. This figure has been confirmed by a number of sources.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, indeed. This is the same Mr. Romney who steadfastly insisted that there were not two Americas, oh no sir. (Fact check: Yes, there are–the handful of people at the top who possess the wealth of nations, literally, and then The Rest Of Us)……So, what this “Romney and his 500” phenomenon illustrates is how profoundly Out Of Touch this exclusive “Club” is with the vast majority of people just trying to get by in this increasingly third world nation of ours. The situation is dire. I’m ranting, I know, but it is sincere! More money for the war industry—great!– with all of these weather catastrophes happening, why don’t they have the army line up on the beaches and fire their weapons into the approaching hurricanes? Frankly, I am less concerned about North Korea and its Leader with the conveniently distinctive haircut, because I am beginning to wonder How much of this is another kind of “let’s keep the people scared” Hoax? Really, is he going to attack us? The North Koreans are going to invade us? I have wondered about the true condition of our electrical power grid, if it is so woefully unmaintained that it is getting ready to collapse, but, if the news media says Kim unleashed an “EMP” weapon against us, then everything can be blamed on him! Either way, we all will still be in the dark…. Okay, I am somewhat curious if he really does have “nuclear weapons” (do we have real proof of this?), and, exactly where are they getting their missile technology (or is some of it being gifted?). Here we have a country the size of Indiana, and it can afford all of this, somehow? Meanwhile, there is a certain little country in the Mideast, about the size of New Jersey, with “nukes” and missiles and a huge interference in our political process and “foreign aid” amounting to billions of dollars annually and horrible mistreatment of the Palestinians, and few appear to be worried about that little country. I Guess it has something to do with the payoffs.
The figure of 25,000 tons of gold is not credible, either for Russia or China.
To what end? To boost defense spending. The purpose of government is to create problems that justify more govenment to create more problems to justify more government to create more problems to justif…..
I’ve been waiting for an article like this for awhile. From the outset, it struck me as strange that Trump should announce yet again a massive increase in “defense” [ = offense] spending, as if the already-bloated peak reached by the previous administration surely would remain this way, considering the monstrous size of the defense budget and the trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/19/85-Trillion-Unaccounted-Should-Congress-Increase-Defense-Budget
In addition to bipartisan support, the budget defense increase, significantly IMO, receives enthusiastic support from Wall Street, by none other than former Goldman Sachs, current Director of Trump’s National Economic Council (fastforward to 9:10)
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/03/12/gary-cohn-reinvest-military-fox-news-sunday
Looks like, to me, they are preparing for America’s next big war.
UK Defence Minister Fallon has also recently allowed for increased “defence” budget.
.
@ JJ
Yeah. Right. Two inflatable dinghies, 3 rolls of barbed wire from the farmers market, 24 secretaries, 3 hair-stylists, 267 translators, 6 mental health counselors, 4 bungee straps, a mini-metro tire for the flatty on the admiral’s ride and a lawnmower-powered bath tub with a 303 rifle in each tap-hole, fondly called an ‘aircraft carrier’.
We can proudly boast, though, that the 100,000 strong military that ‘defends’ our population of 80 million, including some 15million Asians, have managed to recruit a total of 42 muslims across all forces.
That’s a real deal. If there is going to be a war, what and who’s intact at the end?
If one looks at current pinda actions, it is clear as day what is going on here is that the zionazis see their influence failing and are reinforcing their enforcer colony for expanded warfare against victims who are actually capable fighting back. Expecting only colonial policing, the zionazis rebuilt their american enforcer colony’s military around this mission, and let atrophy the serious aggression aspect against capable opponents. They are crash coursing an attempt to catch up.
This is not about domestic jobs or politics or campaign promises. It is the zionazis and their fellow nwo oligarchs doubling down in their efforts of world domination, now that the sods are faced with serious challenge. IE: geopolitics. This is actually an act of desperation on the part of zionazi, inc., as they are gambling on their sacrifice of their pindo enforcer colony, as the economic policy they now demand will certainly entail, will recover their lost “glory” by subduing their rivals. Like the nazis ordering an all out offensive in Hungary as Berlin was conquered by the Russians.
“There is no next generation of US weapons comparable to the Abrams and Bradley armored vehicles, F-15 and F-16 fighters, or AEGIS destroyers that would provide the US with the sort of qualitative advantage it enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s.”
LOL. By what measure. :D
None of those weapons ever faced serious opposition. Instead they faced stripped down systems operated by poorly trained operators who were also vastly outnumbered and lacked the support infrastructure necessary to put up a serious challenge.
Generally I find Southfront works very informative, but this one promotes far too much of the 80’s zio-pindo propaganda memes of that time, both military and domestic politics. The quote I provided is just one of several defective points in the analysis.
vot tak, how can you even suggest there is desperation looming among the Zionazis? I mean, after all these very long, tedious submissions by twilight to the effect that these scum are infinitely stronger, smarter, and more confident than the rest of the Universe combined you should surrender instantly!
The world’s most dysfunctional bureaucracy since the collapse of the Soviet Union resides in the 5 sided whorehouse on the Potomac. So the extra money will be shat away on imbeciles, like useless suck ups in the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin and Congress Critters.
The Defense Death Spiral
Why the Defense Budget is Always Underfunded
By Chuck Spinney (updated January 2014, July 2015)
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.ca/p/the-defense-death-spiral-why-defense.html
Nero fiddled while Rome burned …
Trump is just a matador’s red cape (well, ok orange) to distract the masses while the BIG games go on …
The purpose of a system is what it does, and the MIC ‘budget’ is simply to keep the velocity of usd$ fiat swirling around in an ultimately worthless wall (st) paper money tornado-vortex comprised of the principle agents of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
First principle: create demand for usd$
Second principle: maintain demand for the usd$
Third principle: there are not other principles
The Trump-Clinton (HR) death-star binary is a perfect reflection of the American ‘soul’ — the anima and animus dancing. Those who would have us watch the clown@work are manipulating the shadows and dark thing within.
The doddering ‘king’ of Sandy Arabia was recently ‘forced’ to walk down the last 50% of his airport elevator to pick up some S-400 ‘insurance’ coverage. Clearly the shoe is now on the other foot as he was paraded like a common fool to receive an honorary ‘degree’ from Moscow Uni. The Russians put on a much more classy and subtle show of accepting tribute from their new ME vassals than getting Obama and Trump to bowing before the Saudi Dynasty for a gold chain collar.
But the visit paid dividends — including a new $15b THAAD deal inked by the US within days. Double insurance, or double jeopardy? These assets are the only new currency once the wallpaper falls to the floor. Dump time…?
The Saudi’s are absolutely fantastically rubbish at war, except if you are blowing up railway tracks with Mr Lawrence. They have lost over 10 ships fighting Yemen. And Yemen don’t even have a navy. Some of them they have just crashed into the big, lumpy hard stuff that most seafarers know as ‘land’.
https://southfront.org/2-other-saudi-warships-were-destroyed-by-yemeni-forces/
So I don’t doubt that they have bought the S400 so that when their chaps fire off a THADD or two to celebrate their brother-in-law’s wedding, they can then shoot them down, to much cheering, before they land in the middle of the nearest city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkzgYbL58qQ
The Saudis spend $80 billion a year on their military.
This is done basically (a) to keep Uncle Sam happy and (b) to provide endless opportunities for graft for Saudi princes.
The £80 billion Yamamah arms deal of the 1980s was so corrupt that £20-40 billion went in graft.
Tornado bombers were put through the books at £25 million (real price then £12 million) to pay for all the bribes. Bandar got £1 billion of the loot. Mark Thatcher got a mere £40 million – peanuts.
Saudi planes had to be grounded for a time for fear that one of the princes was going to use them to bomb the palace.
Tanks that were bought were lined up and left to rust in the desert.
Their troops are Pakistani mercenaries – they can’t trust their own people.
A religious nutter with a band of armed followers took over the Holy Places in Mecca.
The Saudis were incapable of doing anything about it – they had to call in French special forces to get them out.
The Israel Lobby in the US is always screaming from the rooftops about the danger to Israel from arms deals. But this is a joke. For all the danger to Israel, they might as well have been selling the Saudis water pistols.
just like WW2 strategy didn’t work at all in Vietnam, this encore of 1980’s won’t work in new reality of 2020’s.
@”Russia’s economy is on a far more sound footing than the Soviet economy was in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Despite decades of Western sanctions and sabotage the Soviet economy was the 2nd biggest in the world, until Gorbachev and Yeltsin destroyed almost everything to please the US empire.
“I decided that I must destroy the whole apparatus of the CPSU and the USSR. Also, I must do this in all of the other socialist countries.”
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm
GDP:
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/press/pr2000/00gen14/00gen14b.jpg
They seem to believe in remodeling the globe by war and conflict. This seems to be their primary guiding ideology. It is the answer to every problem they face and they are in very deep. Clearly it is not working and is creating more problems for future generations to face. This is very much an issue between a rich, Masonic class that orders the wars and the rest of humanity. The rest of humanity needs to evict this dangerous class that has now enabled and organized private military with private intelligence and is awarded substantial amounts of the public’s money by the corrupt government of the USA.
It’s like trench warfare. No one would have begun trench warfare if they though it would wind up in such bloody stalemate’s. But once they were in up to their elbows the generals could only cry out ‘One last push, and we’ll break through to the sunlight’.
The Americans are where they are because of hubris and downright bloody buffoonery, common to all aristocracies. And men shed blood while they refuse to acknowledge that their truck does, in fact, have a reverse gear.
Trump pushed for military budget increase for two basic reasons:
—To gather support from the military against the IC which was fiercely opposing him.
—To jumpstart jobs creation with the one manufacturing sector that was the easiest to expand and did not face Chinese or other competition.
By scaring NATO states into spending more, there would be increased purchases of US weapons and ammunition. It is working.
By expanding wars in Syria and Iraq and Africa and Afghanistan, there would be more expenditures in the MIC sector. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Additionally, the deep reservoirs of Soviet arms are shuttled from Eastern Europe vassals to the ME hellholes. Thus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, et al will be replacing the old with US military arms and ammo.
More jobs.
However, Trump failed at his goal to stop the IC from destabilizing his administration.
And, meanwhile, he has lost Presidential authority over military practices.
The Hegemon is only blocked by Russia and China. Where they are weak, the hegemony deepens. Baltics, Balkans and Africa could become very much worse, while Russia tries to finish the Syrian war and heal the ME.
As you can see, it takes a very powerful military, even in small scale like the Russians in Syria, to stop the Hegemon. Americans don’t suffer. Proxies take the beating in US wars.
Trump knows the only power the US has left to use is its military. It has lost the economic leverage to China, the leverage of the petrodollar to Russia-China and yuans backed by gold (in exchange in Shanghai), and the moral high ground to multi-polarity. The rest of the world no longer wants a unipolar global system.
Here’s one example: Watch how Ukraine goes in the new environment of Volker-Surkov talks (they’ve met twice) and the impact of the New Law of Kiev, indicting Russia as an invader-aggressor.
The US is trying to get leverage over Russia, skirting Minsk 2 while not abandoning it altogether.
Realistically, only a military solution can solve the Ukraine-Donbass issue.
Meanwhile, the US will, as will lackey Canada, supply weapons to the nazis.
For Trump, jobs is the issue regardless of the neocon, Khazarian hatred of Russia.
Trump’s entire Presidency rests on movement of the US economy. He bet on military industrial jobs. If thousands of foreigners have to die and cities have to be destroyed, the connection is not there for Trump or the American worker. They have never seen the connection.
As for the increased national debt? US does not yet have to pay the debt. Interest rates are so low, the burden is psychological (like any “market”). Rah, Rah. The Stock Market is up. Debt (Trillions per year) means jobs for the few, but at least some have jobs. And the MIC is the ultimate pig trough of corrupt money—those Trillions again.
The US will never think its way out of the mess it has created for the world and for itself.
It has baptized itself “Exceptional”, and blessed itself with a Plenary Indulgence (forgiveness of all its sins).
Only another decade or two of pressure by the ‘tectonic plates’, Russia and China, will alter the Hegemon and reduce it into a multipolar harmony of sorts. It won’t be fast and it won’t be a collapse. The great British Empire reduced like a detumescent phallus in a cold shower. It didn’t collapse. Don’t expect the Great Phallic USA to collapse.
What we see is the blue pill of defense spending engorging the only organ left to the blind, deaf and weak Hegemon Beast. The next phase is impotence. The USA already has proven to be sterile. The Imperium is at its conclusion. Dangerous, but going limp.
I wonder how much the west’s financial system affects China still. Rating agencies have been dropping China’s bond rating supposedly because of their debt which is 260% of GDP. I think the US is about 100% or so even with it’s 20 trillion dollar sovereign debt.
With other countries sanctions it usually means being cut off from the SWIFT system but China is too important for that to ever really happen.
“In China, Economic Pressures Beyond the Government’s Control”
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/china-economic-pressures-beyond-governments-control/
George Friedman is probably former and maybe current CIA but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
The real military budget is about $1,200 billion, not the official $697 billion figure. Plus $100 billion for “Intelligence.”
Most of the colossal US military spending is wasted or stolen.
Just one example.
Congress decided the US Air Force was going to get some new transport planes.
The USAF didn’t want them. It had enough transport planes already, and these were twin engined and propeller driven. They didn’t have the range or capacity to be of any use anyway. They said they were no use, but Congress insisted they have them because they provided jobs in some important congressional districts. The USAF said reluctantly it would take half a dozen. Congress insisted they take 200. These were never used. They spent a fortune storing them for free in hangars, and were desperate to get rid of them. In the end they gave them away for free to whoever would take them. I think Thailand got some.
There is no system of accounting to cover all this gargantuan military spending, not even the most basic one. At the time of 9/11, $2.3 trillion of military spending had gone “missing.” That figure has since grown to $9.3 trillion.
That’s $9,300,000,000,000, or nearly half the US national debt.