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Mutual Assured Spending: India Ready To Join US and China Military Buildup
The Pentagon has just warned that China's 17.6% increase in its 2008 military budget "threatens the stability of Asia."China's official military budget is $58.8 billion, but the real figure is estimated at around $110 billion. Even so, Washington's warning was pretty rich coming from the sole superpower that spends 10 times more on its military than China -- a nation with four times the U.S. population.
American Defence Secretary Robert Gates unblushingly accused China of "lack of transparency" in concealing major defence programs. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Some $200-250 billion of secret "black" projects are hidden in the Pentagon's trillion-dollar budget and those of other departments.
Washington's constant warnings about Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea make it look like a spinster terrified by a mouse. The combined military spending of those nations is a paltry $10 billion. The U.S. and its closest allies account for two-thirds of the world's military spending. Trying to keep up with the West militarily drove the old Soviet Union to bankruptcy.
The U.S. spends more on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than Russia and China do on defence.
Now, the Bush administration is trying a rerun of Reagan years by goading Russia into more military spending to justify high U.S. military spending. Without the "threat" from China and Russia, how will the Pentagon justify a new generation of F-22 and F-35 fighters it wants, new tankers, heavy bombers, submarines, carriers and other surface warships?
You don't need any such fancy hardware to fight rag-tag jihadis armed with rifles and homemade bombs.
But there's a deeper issue with China. The U.S. has yet to come to terms with China's rise as a major modern military power. The U.S. Navy has dominated South Asia's littoral since 1944. By 2015-17, maybe sooner, China will be the dominant Asian power. This means U.S. geopolitical influence will be pushed back from the Asian mainland into the Pacific.
GRADUAL PROCESS
This process will be gradual. Today, China has only around 350 modern warplanes, a weak navy, and no ability to project power more than 160 kilometres from its coasts. China rapidly is developing the capability to conquer Taiwan and neutralize U.S. Navy task forces coming to its rescue. This will be accomplished by barrages of air- and sea-launched anti-ship missiles, and electronic warfare.
China also threatens to attack America's Achilles heel: Vulnerable space-based communications and satellites upon which U.S. forces have become dangerously dependent.
Taiwan aside, military tensions between the U.S. and China are totally avoidable -- unless stoked by neocon Republicans longing for war with China. What is even more bizarre, while the Pentagon fulminates against the dangers of China, Iran, etc., the U.S. is helping build the military power of a huge nation that one day could become a serious strategic threat to the United States -- India.
The Bush administration is striving to conclude a deal to supply Delhi with nuclear fuel, technology, and billions of high-tech weapons. Meanwhile, India is developing nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles and sea-launched strategic missiles that could one day pose a threat to the United States.
FIREPOWER
Why is no one in Washington asking if India needs 7,000-mile range ICBMs, nuclear-powered missile submarines and powerful anti-ship missiles? Its current medium-range missiles cover all China. ICBMs are needed only to reach Europe or North America. India is unlikely to target Paris or London, but one day will compete heavily with the U.S. for Mideast oil, other resources and regional influence.
China inevitably will join this strategic, three-way rivalry as Beijing and Delhi's economies and ambitions grow. Washington's helping India become a potential threat is short sighted in the extreme and will antagonize China needlessly.
The astoundingly incompetent Bush administration is thus seeding future conflict in Asia. But that's tomorrow. Today, by creating a monstrous credit bubble, wildly printing money, and recklessly spending, the Bush White House is spreading dangerous inflationary forces throughout the world economy. That, not China, is the real danger.
Eric Margolis writes a regular column for The Toronto Sun.
© 2008 The Toronto Sun
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25 Comments so far
Show AllA two-part piece that should be read by everyone who posts to this website:
http://www.getunderground.com/underground/features/PrintReady.cfm?Article_ID=2244
http://www.getunderground.com/underground/features/PrintReady.cfm?Article_ID=2247
Margolis' hatred of anything 'Indian' comes brimming out as usual. This Reagan/Nixon era chump cant seem to get over his cold war fetish. The old cold war rivalry when India and Russia were thick as twins does not exist anymore ... someone should remind thus old geezer.
Do as we say, not as we do.
Our leaders keep looking for enemies because they only know how to live within a war of all against all. They have no desire to foster peace on Earth unless it is according to their terms.
riddimboy
you're not suggesting that u.s. "defense" spending is justified?
because many see this as "offense" spending to continue the imperialism abondoned by the british and the frensh
Perhaps by the time India and China become global military and naval powers all the Middle East oil will be gone. I hope so.
Bush hardly seems reckless to the beneficiaries of these decisions. Even though the MIC will ultimately bankrupt America, the tiny fraction that made a fortune will always remember Bush as their economic sugar daddy. I'm afraid that a Clinton and/or Obama White House will only ensure that when it comes to military spending, it will be business as usual.
We're obviously being duped on China. If China were a threat, we'd quit sending countless jobs there, and selling off our debt to them.
Indeed -- the bulk of products on the shelves in most any Big Box are made in China. I went to a craft store yesterday to have a picture framed, and browsed around while I waited. In the scrapbooking aisle I came across scrapbooks for US Marines, Navy, etc. Put your photos, letters, etc. in them. All proudly displaying the official seals. And Made in China.
The Pentagon may as well give all of that money to the Chinese government, so they can beef up their military. If China were to be threatened, destabilized, anything causing their factories to stall, etc. our economy would collapse.
The US of I is threatening countries within the Chinese sphere of influence. Look no further than Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. China has energy import arrangements from these countries, and US presence in Iraq is a direct threat. It is as if the Russians were threatening Canada, Mexico and occupying Cuba all at once. So there is an encouragement. As for a disparity in arms spending , and who is going to go broke and collapse first, I would say the US of I is leading that race, and has a massive head start. When the US of I collapses, the Chinese economy will lose a big customer. The Chinese spending on arms is likely to be more efficient, not having anti missile defense systems and extreme high tech aircraft to gobble the funds up. All it needs is medium tech, threatening and effective. The US needs a drastic reduction in spending, because of the inefficiency. The US arms industry is a massive Soviet Socialist project, with no effective government or competitive oversight, apart from let us see who wastes the most money.
"China's official military budget is $58.8 billion, but the real figure is estimated at around $110 billion."
Peanuts, baby - "we" spend 'bout that much every 30 weeks or so in New Iraq alone, not counting the 10 or 12 billion that goes missing every other year...
In a few years, the Military Industrial Greed Asylum will run out of boggeymen to charge us for protection from and start insisting they have credible reports from an "alien defector" that the Eklobolars from planet B66-2 in the BW Tauri galaxy are planning to attack America with space weapons of mass destruction... which will require, for reasons unknown, the purchasing of lots and lots more submarines, carriers and, off course, the expansion of the illegal spying and non-torture-torture programs...
@frank1569 March 9th, 2008 4:12 pm
I was about to write in and disgree that we could ever run out of bogeyman. But then I started laughing at the need for submarines etc, and began to recognise sarcasm.
Military Spending trumps National Security
kinda ironic huh?
This article looks like its been written by a NeoCon.
There is an extremely high level of adoloscent intelligence at work here.
1. America should be the only superpower.
2. China is not excercising its influence and using its muscle anywhere else in the world, only in Taiwan.
3. The economic disaster America is headed into with the loss of revenue in manufacturing, printing money by selling Bonds to CHINA and oil rich naitons will have no effect on America's standing as a Superpower in the world.
4. Russia's political ambitions are dwarfed by what India is up to.
5. India's political ambitions will be jettisoned if America stop helping it's cause.
"riddimboy you're not suggesting that u.s. "defense" spending is justified?"
No .. im just pointing out the hypocrisy that writers like Margolis engage in. American and European military build-up is overlooked conveniently while the 'third world' countries dare not challenge us because you see its immoral to posess high-tech weapons ... only we can.
After the last 8 years if you still think every country in the world should not beef up their weapons inventory then you are living in some cabin in Wyoming or something. You dont seem to understand how much fear the Americans have instilled in every country in the world. You should travel sometime !
We do need more military, more energy consumption, more mining and more wealth concentration or we might survive just to die of lack of health care.
Mutual Assured Destruction pretty much destroyed the Soviet Union and would have destroyed us, but we had a higher limit on our credit card. Now 16 years after the end of the cold war we spend more than the whole rest of the world combined on "defense", which is nothing more than high tech workfare for the military industrial complex defense contract worker.
What's the debate about here??? The human organism is only one of billions on the planet and has shown itself pefectly capable of fucking up whatever it touches. No excuses!!! The world will be a far better place when we're gone!!! The military will save us? hahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!
"if you still think every country in the world should not beef up their weapons inventory then you are living in some cabin in Wyoming or something. You dont seem to understand how much fear the Americans have instilled in every country in the world. You should travel sometime".........
WHAT THE F*#K.........is this vile crap all about, riddimboy..........didn't you read my first statement? what part of it didn't you understand? imperialism implies the very argument you made.......we're on the same page
now settle down......
and it's montana not wyoming
China may have more-like 5-times our population -- ergo we are actually spending more than 50-times-as-much on Military 'defense' than they-do (and theirs mostly provides-'employment', while ours mostly feeds already-fat Corporations-involved).
[Add-in Trade Deficit's, manufacturing-dependencies, recession, falling-dollar, war-costs, THE 'Deficit'&interest, inflation, recession, "bursting-bubbles", carbon-taxation, nukes (civilian&military), rising Energy/Food/Housing/etc., et al -- and, you now see the "Perfect Storm" as it clears the Horizon]
Hang-on...!
"and it's montana not wyoming"
ok thats hilarious ..
Military Industrial Complex is tied to Wall Street and must produce more and more each year to be profitable. Without real oversight, regulation, and lasting peace, we are doomed to repeat the same military adventures over and over.
Margolis is simply commenting on the short sighted perceived interests of our political elite. I guarantee you he doesn't share those beliefs. He just recognizes that their hubris doesn't even allow them to make the correct decisions that would lead to a permanent "single superpower". That is the true desire of our evil elite...including Obamam. That is the truth whether you want to admit it or not.
Amazing how the Margolis-haters always come get in some nasty posts right away. I see nothing wrong with what he says about India. You'd think someone in India would be questioning the strategic purpose of India building missiles and weapons to strike Western Europe and North America. In terms of how they spend their money, there wouldn't seem to be much justification for that in India's strategic situation.
Of course, all of this distracts from Mr. Margolis' main point. And in his main point he's being the antithesis of a 'cold warrior'. Because what he's pointing out is the way all militaries point to phantom enemies in order to justify their spending. Then once they get their spending approved, other militaries look at that and then demand their own boosts in spending. And it goes around in a circle that way until we've all got guns and weapons out the wazoo, but we've got no butter, no food and we've forgotten to spend money on educating our people, keeping our people healthy or building our infrastructure.
Part of the problem is the insistence of the US Air Force that it remain the #1 air power in the world. If the USAF doesn't get more planes soon, it will be surpassed -- by the US Navy!
I suspect that it takes more than a few Big Macs to make a difference. It isn't franchisees that make the decision to go to war, after all!
Seriously, the Golden Arches theory has always sounded like a belief in "Magic Capitalism," and made me wonder if buying or selling something would cure warts, too. I don't think capitalism is magic, but I do believe that people generally pursue what they perceive as their own self-interest, and if we can arrange things economically so that a nation perceives its self-interest as leading to peace, so much the better!
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Submited by : Caballos
India is the worlds largest democracy.
India is the only democracy which is not involved in any kind of Military blocs.
Democratic India is surrounded by lots of nuclear armed enemies like China which is a very violent communist country and Pakistan which is ruled by Military which nurtures Islamic Terrorism.
Democratic India is the only country which can stand against the Communist China in the whole of Asia.
Democratic India needs to build its Armed forces to fight against Communist China and Highly instable Pakistan armed with Nuclear bombs.
Democratic India has never invaded any country. To save its democracy India needs to strengthen its armed forces.
I dont know why the people are against Democratic, Secular, peaceful, developing India and supporting Communist , Violent China.
Democratic India is very transparent than communist violent China. I want to know why people are against India which has been more peaceful than violent China. Please justify your cruel propaganda against the worlds largest democracy.