Time to Increase Defense Spending – WSJ

The shift is hard for the Biden administration. Team Biden came into office believing that the U.S. could pay less attention to European and Middle Eastern security issues while focusing attention and resources on the Indo-Pacific and the challenge from China even as it addressed global governance issues like climate change. But the perception that the U.S. was cutting back on Europe and the Middle East led Russia and Iran to step up plans for expansion while leading Beijing to double down on its links with Moscow and Tehran as a way of making life difficult for the Americans.

Whether this new era of geopolitical competition is another cold war is a question of semantics. We certainly are back to Cold War levels of insecurity, with powerful adversaries seeking to diminish U.S. national security and that of its allies. The response of the U.S. and its allies must be equally energetic. Rebuilding American foreign policy will take time. The immediate task is relatively simple, however, and one America can do on its own, without allies. America must get serious again about defense spending.

via www.wsj.com

So is this the answer to every neo-con’s prayer, or a genuine threat to all that we hold dear from across the Pacific, or both? I fear it’s both. I don’t think the PRC is just defending itself against American empire; they’re building their own, and a nightmarish one it is and it’s going to impinge on our homes, and already does electronically. The post-Soviet Rooskies would love to tag along for the ride. Plus they both seem to have lots and lots of American useful idiots who want us all to be good little Woke robots, clicking on youtube and facemask, and generating all those bucks so Bezos can be the first penis-head in space. I say a plague on both their houses. There has to be a way we can defeat the commies abroad while remaining American at home. Our current military leaders do not seem quite up to that, but there have to be men and women around who can do it, if only we can find them. Maybe establish hanging as the penalty for military corruption, like the PRC does? Because otherwise it’s going to be a feeding frenzy.