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| Government Corruption |
| US military budget is under threat: what kind of war will the Pentagon have enough money for? |
| 2023-07-18 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. By Malek Dudakov [REGNUM] Another confrontation broke out between Congress and the White House. Two months ago, this almost brought America to default. Now at stake is the Pentagon's budget for next year, the adoption of which has become a real epic with an unpredictable outcome. The annual approval of the defense budget is rarely without drama. The preparatory phase usually takes several months. Different legislators make their own amendments to the budget, but it is far from always possible to approve them. Someone, for example, wants to lobby for the purchase of weapons from those companies whose production facilities are located in their district or state. Others seek to reform the military based on personal experience or expert opinion. The Pentagon's budget is the largest in the world. In terms of military spending, the United States bypasses the next ten countries combined. However, even this money is often not enough for all the "Wishlist" of Washington. Therefore, it is often necessary to make a difficult choice - whether to build, for example, new submarines or invest in the creation of next-generation fighters and bombers. This year, the situation has become more complicated due to the budget deal concluded by the Republicans and Democrats to stabilize the growth of the US national debt. This agreement imposes serious restrictions on the growth of government spending - they should increase by no more than 1% over the next 10 years. Many legislators in Congress wanted to completely freeze the size of the military budget at the current level, or even cut it. However, in the end, the House of Representatives passed its draft budget for the Pentagon, which will be about 2% more than the previous one, and will amount to $880 billion. Such a draft budget caused a very negative reaction from many "hawks" in Washington. They are unhappy that US military spending next year will be de facto cut when adjusted for inflation. In addition, this budget cuts spending on replenishing stocks of weapons, primarily ammunition spent on the Ukrainian front. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, the United States has supplied Kyiv with 2 million shells of all calibers and tens of thousands of missiles. According to analysts in Washington, the Pentagon will need at least 5-7 years to replenish them. And for some categories of weapons, such as stingers, which have long been discontinued, the United States will have to spend more than 10 years replenishing depleted stocks. It was precisely the problems with the lack of conventional ammunition that the Joe Biden administration pointed out when it announced the decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine. Many in Congress opposed. Moreover, criticism was heard from both the right wing of the Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump, and the left side of the Democrats. In total, more than 120 lawmakers voted to ban the export of cluster munitions. However, the "hawks" still managed to hack this amendment. Several other high-profile amendments on the suspension of military trenches to Ukraine or the US withdrawal from NATO did not pass either. They were proposed by some of the Republicans who are in favor of curtailing US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. They are guided by their electorate, which is already very tired of this militaristic agenda. Now, of course, such initiatives will lead nowhere. But this is a clear indicator of what Trump supporters want. If he wins the presidential election in 2024, then it is quite possible to expect a sharp decrease in the dynamics of arms supplies to Kiev, and a real crisis in relations with NATO countries, which the Republicans consider America's "freeloaders". But the Republicans in the House of Representatives passed amendments regarding the cultural wars that are tearing America apart. In particular, they want to ban the Pentagon from recruiting transgender people into the US armed forces with the promise of a free sex change operation. American army of the future: trans, migrants and artificial intelligence At the moment, there are about 15,000 transgender people among American soldiers. They are not hired out of a good life. The Pentagon has big problems with a shortage of recruits, which is why it has to focus on accepting LGBT representatives or migrants. In addition, the military budget forbids organizing so-called drag shows on American military bases. These are dances of men dressed in women's clothes and made up. The U.S. Navy even recently had its own “digital ambassador,” who gained notoriety on TikTok for dancing in women’s clothing. In service, she is a sailor named Joshua Kelly, and after dressing up, she transforms into a "dancer" with the pseudonym Harpy Daniels . The transgender revolution in the United States has also covered the armed forces, which cannot but cause outrage among conservative America. And now they will try to somehow limit these processes, at least at the level of the military budget. In addition, it will include an amendment prohibiting the Pentagon at its own expense to transport female soldiers from Republican states to Democratic states if they want to have an abortion. In most Republican states, abortion is now restricted or outlawed. The White House flatly refuses to approve the military budget, where there are such amendments. The Democrats have put a lot of effort into arranging the “liberalization” of the US military and reformatting this traditionally conservative institution for themselves. And they are not going to refuse to impose a transgender agenda at the Pentagon level. In addition, Republicans control only the lower house of Congress, while Democrats have a majority in the Senate. And they will certainly present their draft budget, where there will be no restrictions on transgender people. But Republicans may refuse to vote for such a military budget. The result is a stalemate that is so typical of Washington in the current split. Moreover, American politicians do not have much time to build up. By the fall, the current Ukrainian budgets will run out, and it will be necessary to urgently agree on new military tranches for Kyiv, or they will abruptly stop. The Ukrainian counter-offensive is failing, with European countries complaining that they cannot start training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets. The Pentagon is not shipping training simulators to Europe, waiting for the next budget to be approved. There are many problems within America's military-industrial complex itself. Military corporations are very slowly increasing the production of weapons, and this is not enough even to cover the needs of Ukraine, not to mention new possible conflicts over Taiwan or Iran that threaten to erupt in the coming years. There are big delays in the construction of new submarines and destroyers of the next generation Zamvolt. There is a lag in strategic weapons from Russia and China - the latest tests of hypersonic missiles by Lockheed Martin Corporation ended in a painful failure. Due to the shortage of rare earth metals, the export restrictions of which are introduced by China, the production of F-35 fighter jets, which is already far behind the plan, may stop. This accumulating lump of problems the Pentagon needs to solve. Otherwise, the entire American war machine could be in jeopardy at one moment. For now, however, Washington is more concerned about transgender battles. And this is very symbolic - the cultural and political divide in the United States is already so strong that even the adoption of the military budget is faced with enormous difficulties. But even more important is the degradation of the entire public political discourse in America, when real problems are replaced by fictional ones. This is a clear indication of the empire of the era of decline, into which the United States is clearly turning every day. |
| Posted by:badanov |