Red Scare Redux

China appears on track to forge a modern military by 2020, a rapid buildup that could be potentially destabilising to the Asia-Pacific region, the Pentagon has said.

  UK Guardian

To the Asia-Pacific area? Toss aside for a moment that the whole magic money illusion presided over by the Federal Reserve and the US dollar is destabilizing the entire globe, if China were able and decided to take on the US military’s supremacy, the Asia-Pacific area is hardly the size of it.

Fuelled by its booming economy, China's military growth in the past decade has exceeded most US forecasts.

I’ve long thought that the pronouncements of capitalism’s victory over communism were short-sighted. Russia went down for a number of reasons, but Russia was never the entirety of communism.

I’m not talking about ideology. I’m talking about economy. And that’s what Karl Marx was talking about when he said capitalism was not sustainable. As school children, we learn to tie the economics to the ideology and proclaim one evil. If there is an evil economy, capitalism would have to take first prize. But we cannot fathom that anything attached to ourselves is bad.

In fact, no economic pattern is evil. Any would do, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn has noted. The problem is not with the pattern, it is with the greed of men who hold the reins.

But, given that we have greedy men in charge the whole world round, and it will ever be thus, to use She‘s phrasing, perhaps the brilliant minds at the Pentagon should have been more forceful when it came to dealing with Dick Cheney and the neocons whose grandiose plans for the Middle East were insane to begin with. They might then have some possibility of holding their own against a China that is gaining both economic and military power by the hour.

Oh well. I like red and potstickers. It's that god-awful green that will be difficult.

Some China watchers, including members of the US Congress, note with apprehension that rising Chinese defence spending coincides with Washington's plans for defence cuts.

"China clearly believes that it can capitalise on the global financial crisis," said the house armed services committee chairman, Howard McKeon, adding that the US military presence in the Pacific must not be sacrificed in an attempt to control US spending.

In other words, we cannot cut military spending. So get that through your head all you liberal pantywaists and libertarian isolationists.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.