WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s top officials said Thursday that the American military must be ready for possible confrontation with Beijing, pushing the Congress to ratify the Defense Department’s proposed $842 billion budget.
The US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony before the House Appropriations sub-committee on defense affairs, “This is a strategy-campaign budget — and one campaign by the seriousness of our strategic race with the China,”.
US-China ties
Pointing to rises in new technology, such as hypersonics, Lloyd Austin said the budget proposes to spend over $9 billion to build up military capabilities and skills in the Pacific and defend their allies.
It may be recalled that the testimony comes on the heels of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Russia.
General Mark Milley, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that discouraging and preparing for war “is extremely expensive, but it is not as expensive as fighting a war. And this proposed budget prevents war and also prepares us to fight it if essential.”
The growing grouping between Beijing and Moscow, two nuclear countries, and President Xi’s overtures to President Putin during the Ukraine conflict are “troubling,” Lloyd Austin said. The US defense secretary said that Washington had not yet seen Beijing provide weapons to Moscow, but if it does, “it would prolong the war and certainly broaden the crisis possibly not only in the region but worldwide.”
