By Alan MacLeod, Mint Press News, 3/1/21
…Last year, American military planners advised that the U.S. should step up its campaign of psychological warfare against Beijing, including sponsoring authors and artists to create anti-China propaganda. The Pentagon’s budget request for 2021 makes clear that the United States is retooling for a potential intercontinental war with China or Russia. It asks for $705 billion to “shift focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on the types of weapons that could be used to confront nuclear giants like Russia and China,” noting that it requires “more advanced high-end weapon systems, which provide increased standoff, enhanced lethality and autonomous targeting for employment against near-peer threats in a more contested environment.”
…It appears as if the years of negative publicity against the two countries has had an effect, with Americans’ view of Russia and China even more negative than during the Cold War. Both pro- and anti-war voices have stated that the U.S. is on the cusp of entering a second Cold War. The new Gallup poll suggests that the groundwork for such a conflict has already been laid.
Read the full article here.
The only good news I see is General Austin’s visit to Afghanistan to ease us out of that mess in light of his new task of perhaps fighting a three front war vs China, Russia and Iran.
Let’s hope all the $1.9 trillions of pandemic/economy in the can relief money gets spent before it can be diverted to the Pentagon.
Now the White House is talking about $3 trillions for infrastructure. How much will go for upgrading and hardening our foreign bases? That’s infrastructure, right?
American elites are scared witless, they face 2 competitors, one of whom can destroy them economically, the other who can destroy them militarily. Worst of all said elites have brought it all upon themselves with decades of corruption, financial depredation and amorality, they have completely failed their own people, so in time honoured fashion they must distract the masses by creating the ‘evil enemies’ the simple black & white caricatures so beloved of the American people. Isn’t going to work out this time though, not for the US and not for the West. As much as they focus on the ‘other’ this is not going to benefit the collapsing economy, the collapsing infrastructure and the collapsing trust in government. This is not the America of the 60s nor the UK of the late 19th Century it is the financially busted flush of neoliberalism and MMT and the complete break down of the cognitive dissonance bubble most western countries have been living n for the last 25 years. It hasn’t been pretty watching the West dismantle itself since 2008 but it is going to get a lot worse before, or if, it ever gets better.