US Military Budget Just Increased By Another 100 Billion...Media Silent

[Angrboda]

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/08/05...ina-russia

The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 was enacted this month well ahead of a still-pending budget bill.

It was also the earliest date on the legislative calendar that the NDAA has been sent to a president for his signature in more than two decades.

The bill sped through Congress as the nation's military continues waging war in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Niger, Libya, Somalia and an untold number of other global hot spots. All arise from what's been the Pentagon's main post-Sept. 11 focus: fighting terrorism.

But this new NDAA reflects Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' pivot away from those prolonged and inconclusive battles with insurgencies, to what he says should be the Pentagon's main concern: the United States' growing competition with the world's two other great powers, Russia and China.

[Chad32]

Imagine if China defends herself against us by building naval basis in Hawaii, and Vancouver island, and stationing 50,000 troops in Mexico, and deploy strategic bombers to the Bahamas.   Such is america’s Defence against everyone else.

I seem to remember a Cuban missile crisis during the cold war. Not that the US applies the same rules to itsself that it applies to other countries.

[Minimalist]

I was 12.  I remember it well.

[Anomalocaris]

Imagine if China defends herself against us by building naval basis in Hawaii, and Vancouver island, and stationing 50,000 troops in Mexico, and deploy strategic bombers to the Bahamas.   Such is america’s Defence against everyone else.

I seem to remember a Cuban missile crisis during the cold war. Not that the US applies the same rules to itsself that it applies to other countries.

The posture the US adopted during the Cuban missile crisis was made possible by an America that was the primary trading nation on the planet and an economy 10 times the size of that of USSR, and the fact that the Soviet Navy was at the time a pittance next to the USN.

Today America is second to China in both international trade and in total size of economy.  The rate at which China is building up her Navy is several times ours. Her Navy is already much stronger relative to the USN than the Soviet Navy in 1963.  What is more, unlike the Soviet Union, who always treated her Navy as a seaward extension of her continental defence, with only occasional flag showing exercises further abroad, the Chinese are showing every sign of building a navy meant to fight for dominance of high seas and project power overseas.

In terms of raw underlying economic and productive basis to support long term military buildup relative to other powers in the world, America is arguably weaker now than anytime since 1900, and will get much weaker still, perhaps comparable to 1840s, as both China and India has ample potential to easily doubt or triple fundamental American National power.

Whether other competitive powers will set up bases in Western Hemisphere to crowd American power in our own backyard as we’ve crowded everyone else in their own backyard is yet to be seen.  But certainly we will gradually be dug up and tossed out of other major power’s backyards.

The longer we pretend to still be the globallly dominant superpower as we were in the years after WWII,  the more serious the inevitable fall at the end will be.