CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Department of Peace Will Live Again

It’s hard to avoid noticing, and internally screaming over, the Trump administration’s proposed military budget upgrade to $1.5 trillion annually – as though the present trillion-dollar annual gift to the end of the world weren’t enough.

It’s not just the proposed taxpayer bleed. It’s the collective assumption that “self-defense” requires an ever-present readiness to kill lots of people – and beyond that the utter certainty that we have soulless enemies out there who want what we have, hate our freedoms and will take what they can the moment we relax. This is just the way it is. No questions allowed.

And our enemies aren’t pussycats. One of them, for instance, is China. Indeed, as Megan Russell of CODEPINK writes:

“U.S. lawmakers have been using China as a military budget increaser and ultimate policy-generator for years. Competition with Beijing is invoked to justify military expansion, new regional alliances, AI weapons development, semiconductor restrictions, and rising nuclear expenditures. In Washington, framing a policy as necessary to ‘counter China’ has become one of the quickest ways to secure bipartisan support. As a result, the ‘China threat’ rhetoric proliferates while the military budget skyrockets.”

“U.S. lawmakers have been using China as a military budget increaser and ultimate policy-generator for years. Competition with Beijing is invoked to justify military expansion, new regional alliances, AI weapons development, semiconductor restrictions, and rising nuclear expenditures. In Washington, framing a policy as necessary to ‘counter China’ has become one of the quickest ways to secure bipartisan support. As a result, the ‘China threat’ rhetoric proliferates while the military budget skyrockets.”

“A quick way to secure bipartisan support” – that says it all. Nothing holds a country together like a good enemy. This is who we are; this is the identity we’re stuck with. We unify when we fight. Apparently that’s at our political core, which is why any cries for peace........

© CounterPunch