More than half of the expenditures that the U.S. Congress authorize to be spent by the federal Government each year go to pay the military (over $1.5 trillion this year), and so the House and Senate Armed Services Committees shape more than half of the U.S. federal Government. Of course, those expenditures powerfully affect billions of non-Americans too, in such places as Guatemala, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, and Israel. Consequently, the most important thing for Americans to know during this election-year is how and why they fund these enormous expenditures, which are for ‘defense’ (but only 60% of which is formally funded through the ‘Defense’ Department — the other 40% is funded through other federal Departments so that the public won’t know that their taxes go mainly to the military-industrial complex — and won’t know that half of the annual $1.5T military expenditures go to corporations such as General Dynamics, whose market is the U.S. Government).
So, the two Armed Services Committees determine half of the funds that the U.S. federal Government allocate annually. On 16 March 2022, the U.S. Government headlined “ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEES LEADERSHIP ANNOUNCES SELECTIONS FOR COMMISSION ON THE STRATEGIC POSTURE OF THE UNITED STATES”, and announced that “Today, the bipartisan leadership of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, U.S. Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), and U.S. Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), announced their appointments, pursuant to Sec. 1687 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.” That Commission was to draw up the Congress’s priorities which would determine how that $1.5T would be allocated in future years. Here are highlights from this 100% neoconservative document — a document which argues that $1.5T per year to the military isn’t nearly enough — and this document represents the viewpoints of almost all members of the U.S. Senate and House:
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AMERICA’S STRATEGIC POSTURE: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States
October 2023
[THE APPOINTMENTS & BACKGROUNDS OF THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION:]
Madelyn R. Creedon, Chair. Marshall S. Billingslea, Rose E. Gottemoeller, Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Robert M. Scher, Franklin C. Miller.
Jon L. Kyl, Vice Chair. Gloria C. Duffy, Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, John E. Hyten, Matthew H. Kroenig, Leonor A. Tomero.
…
Allies and partners are important as together we are stronger. Greater cooperation, coordination and integration with our Allies and partners is essential to deter conflict and prosper economically. National leaders must communicate to U.S citizens the benefits and importance of U.S. global leadership, Allies and partners and extended deterrence, if they are to gain the support of the American people for the associated policy and costs. …
While we did not conduct a cost analysis of our recommendations, it is obvious they will cost money. We do recognize budget realities, but we also believe the nation must make these new investments and U.S. leaders must communicate to U.S. citizens both the need and urgency to rebuild the nuclear infrastructure and modernize the nuclear forces. These investments in the nuclear enterprise are a relatively small portion of the overall defense budget but provide the backbone and foundation of deterrence and are the nation’s highest defense priority. The investments the Commission recommends in both nuclear and conventional capabilities will provide a safe, secure, reliable, effective, and credible deterrent, which is essential to reduce the risk of conflict, most importantly nuclear conflict. …
The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States was established by the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and concludes that America’s defense strategy and strategic posture must change in order to properly defend its vital interests and improve strategic stability with China and Russia. Decisions need to be made now in order for the nation to be prepared to address the threats from these two nuclear-armed adversaries arising during the 2027-2035 timeframe. Moreover, these threats are such that the United States and its Allies and partners must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously.
We arrive at these conclusions following a comprehensive year-long review of the threats America faces and its strategy and planned capabilities to address those threats. The evidence demonstrates that the U.S.-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes. The risk of military conflict with those major powers has grown and carries the potential for nuclear war. Therefore, the Commission reached the unanimous, non-partisan conclusion that today’s strategic outlook requires an urgent national focus and a series of concerted actions not currently planned. In sum, we find that the United States lacks a comprehensive strategy to address the looming two-nuclear-peer threat environment and lacks the force structure such a strategy will require. …
THE STAKES
FINDINGS
Today, the U.S.-led international order is under threat from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes, which seek to disrupt and displace this order and create a new version conducive to their authoritarian regimes, premised on values antithetical to those held by the United States and like-minded Allies and partners worldwide.
Though the U.S.-led order is threatened, it currently holds. The Commission concludes, however, that unless the United States adjusts its strategic posture, U.S. vital interests and international stability are at risk during the 2027-2035 period.
U.S. Allies and partners give the United States a clear strategic advantage. If the United States were to adopt a defense strategy and associated strategic posture no longer based on existing alliance systems in Asia and Europe, U.S. vital interests would be at risk, U.S. global influence diminished, and Americans’ liberties threatened.
A central thrust of China’s and Russia’s adversarial approach toward the United States
is their building of military capabilities, including major expansion and modernization of nuclear capabilities, which could lead to a situation where both powers pose an existential threat to the United States.
There is a growing risk of confrontation with China, Russia, or both. This includes the risk of military conflict.
Unlike World Wars I and II, a major power conflict in the 21st century has the potential to escalate into a large-scale nuclear war.
While it is challenging to maintain a strategic posture sufficient to prevent major power war, it would be far more expensive to fight such a war.
The urgent imperative to tackle the strategic challenge the United States faces must be consistently conveyed in a bipartisan manner by national leaders and broadly understood by the American people.
U.S. LEADERSHIP
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States and its Allies and partners9 built a geopolitical framework that fostered new levels of peace, prosperity, and freedom across the globe, while allowing the United States to benefit from and ensure the success of this order. U.S. and allied political, economic, and military leadership underpinned that system, with U.S. military strength complementing political partnerships, economic relationships, and multilateral arrangements. U.S. strategic capabilities, including its nuclear deterrent force, are a key element of its military strength. In Asia and Europe, U.S. military capabilities continue to be central to assuring and protecting Allies and partners and deterring adversaries. The United States now extends nuclear deterrence to more than thirty formal treaty Allies, which combined generate approximately one-third of annual global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).10 In so doing, U.S. nuclear deterrence assures U.S. non-nuclear Allies that they do not need their own nuclear weapons, thereby supporting global nonproliferation goals.
Today the longstanding U.S.-led international order is threatened by the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes.11 These regimes seek to disrupt and displace this system, and to create a new version that is premised on values antithetical to those held by the United States and like-minded Allies and partners. Though U.S. policy does not seek to constrain any nation’s peaceful growth, China and Russia are pursuing strategies to dominate their neighbors and replace the status quo with an autocratic model. As a result, in their pursuit of global power, they coerce, threaten, and provoke the United States and its Allies and partners. China and Russia continue to act aggressively across diplomatic, informational, military, and economic fronts to undermine the actions of the United States and its Allies and partners and the international order. These actions threaten U.S. vital interests.12 …
CONCLUSION
The Commission’s recommended steps to improve U.S. strategic posture are urgently needed to respond to a deteriorating global security environment. The present-day outlook on the threat environment, characterized by Chinese and Russian aggressive policies and actions, stands in stark contrast to the hopeful landscape that guided the previous Strategic Posture Commission and the current modernization of America’s conventional and nuclear forces. China and Russia seek to upend U.S. leadership and further their authoritarian agendas.
Their continuing bellicose behavior and the expansion of their strategic arsenals compelled the Commission to conclude that while the current posture of the United States remains strong, it is ill-prepared for the potentially existential challenges of 2027-2035 and beyond. The Commission concluded that to meet these new threats, the United States must change course urgently and resolutely.
After the Cold War, the United States sought to build cooperative relationships with China and Russia and to reduce the role of nuclear weapons. Despite the U.S. best efforts to create the conditions for a just and prosperous world, both Russia and China chose a different path, one of military build-ups, aggression, and extortion.
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This document assumes that whereas America’s coups in over 60 countries starting in 1948, and America’s invasions in 297 countries since 1945 (244 of them after the Soviet Union in 1991 broke up and ended its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror to America’s NATO military alliance) are only defensive, whereas China’s and Russia’s military exenditures are only aggressive; it assumes that Russia and China have no authentic needs to have any military for a defensive purpose, and that America isn’t at all an aggressor anywhere.
The January/February 2023 issue of the academic journal Foreign Affairs from the super-prestigious Council on Foreign Relation contained a lengthy essay by the neoconservative Robert Kagan, who is the husband of the neoconservative Victoria Nuland, the person who headed Obama’s February 2014 coup that grabbed formerly neutral Ukraine and replaced its government by a rabidly anti-Russian one on Russia’s nearest border to The Kremlin, and so started the war in Ukraine, which Russia finally responded to on 24 February 2022. Kagan’s article was titled “A Free World, If You Can Keep It”, and it argued exactly like the Congress’s October 2023 “AMERICA’S STRATEGIC POSTURE” did. Before Nuland worked for the Democrat Obama, she had worked for the Republican Dick Cheney. Neoconservatism is bipartisan in Washington. On that half of the federal budget, both of America’s Parties are united in the belief that only the non-military portions of the federal budget should be cut or not increased; none of the military part should be — and the reason is that America’s now spending half of the entire world’s military expenditures needs to be increased even further in order to protect against the ‘threats’ from China and Russia.
Some people benefit from this. Guess who.
The anti-neocon economist Jeffrey Sachs had it exactly right when he headlined on 26 December 2023 (and documented that) “US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption: The $1.5 trillion in military outlays each year is the scam that keeps on giving — to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders — even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.”
Reposts are welcomed with the reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW.
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