- US Adm. John Aquilino said China’s military is building up at a rate not seen since World War II.
- That puts it on the path to meeting its goal of being ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, he said.
- Aquilino, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, urged Washington to accelerate military development.
China’s rapid military build-up is more expansive than anything seen since World War II, which means it’s on track with its 2027 goal to be ready for a Taiwan invasion, said US Navy Adm. John Aquilino.
“All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” Aquilino wrote in a testimony to the US Armed Services House Committee.
“Furthermore, the PLA’s actions indicate their ability to meet Xi’s preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed,” added the admiral, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command.
Better yet. Instead of spending a trillion dollars to gear up to join WW3, how about spend that money to develope domestic manufacturing so we can completely embargo all imports from China. Stay out of conflicts between other nations.
Hit them in the economy and it will hurt them far more than hitting them with bombs, plus the bonus effect of not wasting thousands if not millions of human lives.
That is the thing. We funded the Chinese build up. Stupid to fund a hostile nation.
We shouldn’t do business with China, period. Not only would our economy grow like crazy, but China would decline and become less of a threat to the world.
Ironically could have learnt something from China. Just said fuck you we got everything we need on this side and close the border.
Except food, China is a net importer of food. I wonder what would happen if it stopped, would the CCP fall or would they all just starve until the population stabilized.
Exactly. There’s no way Hitler’s will try to take Poland. Even if he does, it’s not like the Nazis or Japanese would attack the US.
Americans can’t afford housing, homelessness is increasing, healthcare is unaffordable; and you want its population to support teabagging the rest of the world like it’s 1945. When militaries spread themselves thin, without the nation taking care of its home population, that spells trouble. Ask Rome.
All of those problems are because of political corruption, not raw money in/out. The US spends 3.5% of GDP on military, a lot, but not the most. Ranked #10 globally for military spending per GDP. Russia spends more than the US.
US is not Rome, at least not yet, or anytime in the immediate future.
That puts the Kremlin’s war budget at 4.1%, but their 2024 budget puts military spending at 6% GDP. If they go over (like they did last year by 12%) it’ll be even higher. Some analysts think there’s even more hidden spending not being captured in these numbers.
I don’t understand why you’d use GDP here. Is the assumption that, normalized for currency differences, all countries have the same gdp? That’s not true.
I think argued earlier that tue money goes less far in the us because the cost of living is higher, so then normalize by cost or standard of living? But even that would assume that the average wage in the country is supporting the same lifestyle in both Russia and the us. Which it isn’t. Some countries live “better” than others.
I think raw numbers are probably best here. 100 trillion in military spending is 100 trillion.
I’ll tell this to Terry, the homeless veteran who can’t afford insulin for his untreated diabetes from agent Orange that the U.S. is only ranked 10th in military spending per GDP and ask what he thinks.
The question should not be “how much?” But “why?” If it’s to preserve our “way of life.” Whose way of life? Certainly not Terry’s.
Sounds like you’ve never visited the US.
I’ve only lived here my whole life.
I don’t believe you.
Why? Because I’m not Blue MAGA like you? Read A People’s History of the United States, and if you’re still gung-ho about American Exceptionalism, more power to ya.
You have no idea who I am.
Should I? I’ve never visited North Macedonia 🇲🇰
though luck
Your analogy is not a 1:1 representation of the situation at hand and only serves to distract people from the subject.
I think less of people who always resort to analogies, because they just reduce complicated situations into ones that are easier for their small minds to comprehend.
That’s all well and good, but I just don’t understand. Can you rephrase that in how it relates to an Olympic size swimming pool?
Amazing.
And yeah that was my first thought too, it’s another KremlinGPT.
Porque no los dos?
Um the thousands of human lives part? That’s why we shouldn’t do both?
Paradoxically, a large standing army will mean less likelihood of conflict. Deterrence works.
How did ww1 begin?
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Why did you lowball it at thousands? That war would give COVID a run for its money
Would you rather the Chinese be allowed to have their way with the entirety of the Asia-Pacific region? Based on what we’ve seen in Hong Kong I don’t think that’s a good idea.
China would be irrelevant without its purely manpower based economy.
The idea behind a massive build out of weapons is so nobody even dares to point a barrel in your direction.
The downside is that everybody else will try to find a way to make those weapons irrelevant, like swarms of $1.000 drones bypassing million dollars air defenses.
Because that does not feed the military industrial complex.
Tooling up is cheaper for employers in
$CONGRESSIONAL_DISTRICT.Building up domestic manufacturing takes years of capital investment with no quarterly KPI RoI.
Americans tend to support using public funds on things that don’t benefit them.