Is the US Military Unable to Defeat China? 2024-08-06 14:28

Welcome to Crossroads. A new congressional report claims, at least, that if the United States right now were to go to war with the Chinese Communist Party that the United States would lose. Now look, this July 30th report comes from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy and it says that the U.S. defense industrial base would not be able to produce what the United States would need to win this type of conflict. Now look, is this really the case? Well, I want to go over some of the main claims in this report and kind of analyze it a bit. Now this is Rand and here's what it has to say. China and Russia are major powers that seek to undermine U.S. influence. The 2022 National Defense Strategy, NDS, recognizes these nations as the top threats to the United States and declares China to be the, quote, pacing challenge, meaning, of course, pacing over the course of time. The CCP is the biggest threat based on the strength of its military and economy and its intent to exert dominance regionally and globally. Now look, we've discussed this on the show. The Chinese Communist Party, of course, is kind of the long-term threat as far as U.S. defense, government, as far as they're concerned. Russia is more of the immediate threat. The issue with Russia, of course, is because it's burned through so much of its military to wage the war in Ukraine that it can't really keep that going without the support of the CCP. In terms of national defense and strategy, Russia is still seen as an issue mainly because of that war, but it's understood that without the support of China, that whole thing would come to an end. What they're now looking at are the long-term goals of where things are heading and their understanding that basically the Chinese Communist Party has ambitions to overthrow the United States as the kind of de facto world leader and replace it with its own systems of power. They're recognizing this now. So they're looking at, well, how do we challenge China? How do we push back against this? If the CCP were to actually start a war, like a hot war, because, I mean, look, let's be honest with ourselves. Look at Iran right now. Israel right now is talking about preemptively launching attacks against Iran because Iran's attacking Israel right now because they recently assassinated a couple top officials, including one with Hamas, and is in Iran. That is looking to pop off right now. The CCP is one of the major backers on that on the opposite side of Israel. The CCP is backing, of course, Russia. The CCP is working with other countries, even in Latin America right now with the recent elections in Venezuela. The CCP is backing the Maduro regime. The US has determined the opposition party actually won the election. There's a division, in other words, among global alliances, and the CCP is backing the side that undermines US interest. This is the trend, and I'll tell you right now, it's just starting. Now, on this report, when they're talking about, well, how do we push back against this? What they're saying is this. The commission finds that in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant changes by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China's favor. And they say China's overall annual spending on defense is estimated at as much as $711 billion, and the Chinese government in March 2024 announced an increase in annual defense spending of 7.2%. They note that Russia will devote 29% of its federal budget this year on national defense as it continues to reconstitute its military and economy after its failed initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They say Russia possesses considerable strategic space and cyber capabilities, and under Vladimir Putin, seeks a return to its global leadership role of the Cold War. Again, we talked before about the idea of the Eurasian Empire, which is part of the goal shared by both the CCP and by Russia. Now, it notes that China and Russia's know them as partnership formed in February 2022, just days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea, each of which presents its own significant threat to US interests. This new alignment of nations opposed to US interest creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that a conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war. World War III, in other words. So what they're suggesting is that we're facing a security environment globally, where the CCP and Russia are becoming more aggressive, other countries like Iran are becoming more aggressive, North Korea is becoming more aggressive, they're threatening war. In fact, as we're speaking right now, Iran is talking about launching strikes against Israel, Israel's talking about launching strikes against Iran, the US is positioning its military to respond to that situation, the CCP is backing the other side. Any conflict that starts right now could trigger a world war, a new one. Same thing in Venezuela right now, the CCP is backing Maduro, the US is backing the opposition. If that turns into a civil war, we could get pulled into something down there as well. This is the case right now and it can actually expand. Now look, this is actually all true, based on this report, and I would actually add to that report the likelihood that if a world war actually broke out, we wouldn't just be facing wars against nations, we'd also be facing threats from global terror networks, we'd be facing threats from large-scale threats like subversive groups within the United States. Think mass protests, think popular movements, think the kinds of protests we saw during the hippie movements of the 1960s. Those kinds of things, but not led by Soviet Russia, but instead by this network that the CCP and Russia have established, also using very similar tactics. Now keep in mind also, on the point of Russia and China with their defense spending. Now look, some people would be like, well, $711 billion in China, they're a big country, how much money does the US spend on defense? It's important to note, their money goes further than ours does. You know, the cost of, for example, having a soldier in China versus having a soldier in the United States is significantly less. They get paid less, the money of course is, you know, much more devalued than ours. The pensions, the long-term pay, the retirement, all these things, they're not the same as ours. The cost of sustaining an armed force in their country is significantly cheaper. The other side too is because of our kind of defense industrial complex. It costs a lot of money to buy anything in America. If you, for example, look at the cost of like, you know, a can of beans, for example. When it comes to US military spending, normally if you buy bulk, you're going to pay less. For some reason, with a lot of defense contracts, they tend to actually pay a lot more money. There was a recent congressional hearing, for example, where a congressman held up a bag of like, you know, bolts, basically, and talked about, you know, in the store you could buy this for like 50 cents each, and they're selling it for like thousands. This, Mr. Secretary, is a bag of bushings. This bag of bushings stamped out by machinists, don't need a high, don't need a, you know, they need a high school diploma. It's not anything high-tech about this. All of this bag is compliant with the FAA specifications. How much do you think the Air Force pays for this bag of bushings? I don't know, Congressman. $90,000. This is a $90,000 bag of bushings that you need for any jet turbine engine, just to operate. So the exorbitant cost due to DOD only buying commercial parts from the OEMs, which is essentially sole source, is literally driving us out of business. I mean, the interest on our debt alone is now exceeding, for the first time in American history, the entire defense budget. We can't afford it anymore. The amount of money we spend on some of the same materials is exponentially higher because of the way the government contracts work when it comes to defense spending. The other side, too, though, is that the U.S. military is recognizing this. One of the main reasons is they're looking at the costs of the F-35 jet or the F-22, you know, the Raptor and so on. And they're noting that the way we're heading with defense spending is that it costs so much to buy a single jet that, you know, maybe in the future, our entire Air Force is going to just be a handful of jets that cost pretty much our entire defense budget. Whereas countries like China, in other words, they're looking at bulk. They're looking at mass force. They're looking at basically tools to overwhelm our defenses because there's just too dang many of them. You know, it's the idea that, hey, we know you guys have limited ammo and we're going to throw something to burn every bullet you have, and we're still going to have, you know, human wave tactics happening through these unconventional means. It's that type of thing. Now, given that, of course, you can understand a war would be devastating, you know, in human terms. But the U.S. is also now looking at going the other way. They're looking at, for example, the hellscape strategy we discussed recently. They're looking at swarms of drones. They're looking at low cost, small rather than large vehicles. You know, one of the main things they've even witnessed, for example, in the war in Ukraine is that tanks may even become obsolete. They're very large targets. They're very expensive targets. And you hit one of them with a little tiny drone, dropping a bomb big enough to take it out, it's gone. That is the future of war. Small, vast, cheap. But on the note of China, again, when you look at their defense spending, their money goes significantly further than ours does when it comes to defense spending. Now, you could argue, of course, the quality is significantly lower as well. Remember, of course, when Russia did its initial invasion of Ukraine. One of the reasons why it turned from, you know, projected two-week war to just seize a few regions, right? They wanted to seize Crimea. They wanted to seize a few other parts. That has dragged on now for more than two years. And why was that? It's because they got stalled. When they had their whole, it was a blitzkrieg tactic, right? Lightning war. They were rolling in. They wanted to immediately take this, lock it down, lock out Ukraine. This is our territory now. They got stuck on the road. They had a huge convoy stuck in the mud. And one of the reasons for that was, is they had cheap China-made tires on their military vehicles, and they were getting flat tires. They didn't have logistics systems set up to refuel things. Again, cheap, made-in-China military. It breaks down. It doesn't work. So there's two sides to it, of course. But of course, you know, when it comes to defending your country, you can't count on one side just running into disaster. You have to look at what they project is the actual functional threat. And so based on that, they are looking at the CCP's objectives with this. Now look, remember also, during World War II in the United States, a lot of our military equipment was made through normal domestic manufacturers. You know, car makers were making tanks. You had vehicle makers making, you know, the planes we were flying overhead. We had a lot of domestic sourcing for natural resources. Because again, when you're understanding what makes an industrialized nation, well, it's not just the manufacturing houses. It's the supply chains. It's the resources. It's the entire system that props that up. We as a country lost a lot of our manufacturing base. We burned through a lot of our oil reserves. Remember, of course, that we had a lot of that, and they've been burning through that rather than allowing for domestic production. And we still depend on other countries for a lot of the key components, steel and otherwise, that we need to manufacture military equipment. Not to mention some of the more rare materials like rare earth minerals, a lot of which come from China. And even not to mention, you know, basic goods like medicines, which if you're in a war, you're gonna need a lot of that as well. Now look, remember also, a lot of U.S. defense spending has gone to Ukraine. And so when they talk about the lack of U.S. military budget to take on a future China threat, this is also something to keep in mind. The U.S. actually has been essentially funding a full-scale war. We are, of course, using our ammunition. We're using the parts you need to manufacture that ammunition. A lot of it is going to Ukraine, and that is for an actual war with Russia right now. And a lot's also going to Israel, although to a much lesser degree by comparison. Now look, another key part with this all, the U.S. is actually still manufacturing a lot of military equipment. We're still making bombs, we're still making tanks, we're still making all this stuff, but a lot of it is going to Ukraine. In other words, as the U.S. is manufacturing this, we're not just having it, you know, waiting for our own military to use in a potential war with China. A lot of it is going to Ukraine, a lot of it's being destroyed, but of course it's still being pumped out. And so the manufacturing base is functioning, but it's supporting a different war. In other words, our own military, as this report notes, may not have the reserves right now or the ammo on store to fight this kind of war, because one of the main arguments is we don't actually have the ammunition we need. We're manufacturing it, but it's going to an actual war with Russia right now. And remember also though, because of that, a lot of damage has also been done to the Russian military, to the extent really that Russia would have a hard time, at least in the short term, running any kind of large-scale war for a while outside of Ukraine. In fact, even now, they wouldn't be able to keep the war going there without the CCP helping them prop it up. But like also, there's something important to note. One thing that is often not discussed when it comes to U.S. defense spending on Ukraine or other countries, where does that money go? If the U.S. gives a billion dollars to Zelensky to help fight the war against Russia, where does that money go? Well, a lot of it comes right back to the United States. When they use that defense spending, you know, when we give defense spending to Taiwan or to other countries, a lot of the money comes right back to buy U.S. military equipment. In fact, a lot of times the money they allocate is not like they give them suitcases of cash, it's actually in terms of providing defense, you know, materials or vehicles or whatever else. It goes right back, in other words, into our own defense industrial base. And that is one of the ways, unfortunately, we're fortunate we're looking at, that is one of the ways that the defense industrial complex stays in business, right? Because remember, with the U.S. military, we don't privatize a lot of that. We're not like China, where, for example, the defense industrial base is government-run. We're not like a lot of other countries where, again, it's all under the government. In America, we have private businesses that manufacture the vehicles and the guns and the equipment, for the most part. That has its ups and downs. The up is, of course, the benefit of it is that we are able to innovate in ways that no other country can. The technological scale of our military is above and beyond anything pretty much anywhere in the world. The downside of it is we pay a whole lot more money for it. And, of course, you know, a lot of that goes to research and development, which other countries then steal from us, like China, for example, but that's another issue. But back to this note, with the exception of money that's going to pay for things like pensions and such in Ukraine, because some of our defense spending is going to pay like money to keep their country running, a lot of the other money is actually coming right back into the U.S. economy, and it's actually bolstering our defense industry. Now, look, this report warns of the unrestricted warfare threat of the Chinese Communist Party going beyond, in other words, normal military threats. We talk about this more after we come back from a quick break. With an A-plus from the Better Business Bureau has a five-star rating from thousands of happy clients. Whether you're getting physical precious metals in a gold IRA or delivered to your doorstep, we offer only the highest quality gold and silver. For your peace of mind, we also offer a no-fee buyback commitment, a low-price guarantee, along with free shipping and free insurance. So don't wait. Call the number on your screen today and secure your financial future. Welcome back. A new congressional report is saying that the United States would not be able to win a large-scale war were to take place right now. Now it states that the Pentagon is underestimating China and Russia and could potentially lose to these adversaries if a world war were to break out right now. And this ties into the Chinese Communist Party's other forms of war, you know what they call unrestricted warfare. Now first, let's look at this July 30th report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. It says China, and to a lesser extent Russia, is fusing military, diplomatic, and industrial strength to expand power worldwide and coerce its neighbors. It says the United States needs a similarly integrated approach to match, deter, and overcome theirs, which we describe, they say, as all elements of national power. Now briefly on this, when the Chinese Communist Party looks at war, they're not just looking at, you know, tanks and bombs and physical threats. They're looking at the nationalization of every element of national power, and how do you use this to achieve the objectives of war. Put another way, it's like this. When we think about war, we think about how do you conquer another country using, you know, military means? How are wars normally fought? For the CCP and their unrestricted warfare strategy, what they're looking at instead is, what would you want to actually achieve if you were to wage war on another country? Imagine you wage war, you win, good job, right? What do you get out of it? What what do you actually tangibly get? Well, you get control of their government, you get control of their resources, you can control their business, maybe you can get control of their culture and their entertainment, their media. How do you achieve these without having to wage physical warfare? So they look at ways of waging political warfare. How do you gain control over the government without invading them? They look at resource warfare. How do you gain control over their natural resources without engaging in physical war? They look at their businesses. How do you make their businesses serve yours or work under you, or how do you put them out of business using yours to compete with theirs? They look at these types of things, culture warfare, ideological warfare, media warfare. How do you conquer these industries without having to go to physical war? And if you can achieve that, even not 100%, I mean, look, even if you were to wage war against the country and conquer them, you probably would not fully control these things. It's why it's very hard, it's harder to keep a country than to conquer a country, right? It's very hard to get it, but even if you achieve it to a partial degree, you have subjugated that country to an extent. And so when the CCP uses these tactics, that's what it's doing. It's creating vassal states. It's creating the old forms of national power in other countries that go through more of a Machiavellian type approach. You're looking to control them while maintaining the illusion that they're still independent countries. And for a lot of countries on earth, the CCP has some degree of power like this. They control the natural resources, they control the manufacturing base, they control to an extent the political discourse, they control the business community. They do these types of things in order to extend their control into other countries. What this report is saying is that the United States needs to have some kind of competing system to this, maybe where we don't try to do it through nefarious means, but using more of an American approach based around the recognition of, you know, the idea of freedom and natural rights and these types of things, rather than the CCP's communist system, which is diametrically opposed to the ideas of basic freedom. The U.S., in other words, having some kind of political outreach, having a cultural outreach, having a business outreach or, you know, manufacturing base system, something like the Belt and Road Initiative, in other words, in order to extend the United States into other countries, build them up, but build such a system that represents what we stand for in this world. Now, they note that the National Defense Strategy and the 2022 National Security Strategy promote the concept of what they call, quote, integrated deterrence. But they say neither one represents a plan for implementing this approach. They note that we need something like this, but nobody can figure out how to do it. And notes there are a few indications that the U.S. government is consistently integrating tools of national security power. And they note the U.S. military is the largest, but not the only component of U.S. deterrence in power. And notes that an effective approach to an all elements of national power strategy also relies on a coordinated effort to bring together diplomacy, economic investment, cybersecurity, trade, education, industrial capacity, technical innovation, civic engagement, and international cooperation. They say recognizing the indispensable role that allies play, countries that are favorable towards the U.S. or work with us, in promoting international security, the United States has successfully bolstered bilateral and multilateral alliances in the Pacific, strengthened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, and created new arrangements, such as the AUKUS. And notes the United States cannot compete with China, Russia, and their partners alone. We can't do it by ourselves, and certainly cannot win a war that way. If the United States is going to push back against us, in other words, we need friends. And we need to work with those friends, and build up those friends, and develop their countries, and help them become stronger, in other words. And they note that given the growing alignment of authoritarian states, all the totalitarian countries on earth, uniting under the single CCP banner, fighting against the free world right now. They say the United States must continue to invest in strengthening its allies, building them up, and integrating its military and economic, diplomatic, and industrial efforts with theirs. Building up their industries, making better diplomatic ties, helping their businesses, working on that side, as something to support the military side. Because military strength is built on the foundation of all those other elements. Now they note that alliances are not a panacea, but the U.S. force structure should account for the forces and commitments from U.S. allies. We need to get them fighting alongside us. Now look, personally, I fully agree. Actually, for me, I'd say this is the biggest military threat from the CCP. The biggest threat from the CCP is not the PLA. It's not the People's Liberation Army and their normal fighting force. The biggest threat from the CCP is unrestricted warfare and subversion. For them, that is their primary fighting force. The agents of influence, the people trying to subjugate governments and subjugate businesses and control them, using influence operations to bribe them, to blackmail them, to get them caught in honey traps, to give them money and stroke their egos, and to get them kowtowing to the CCP and selling out their countries. That is the main force of the CCP's operations. And look, the reality is, we are already in a war with the Chinese Communist Party on this front, when it comes to unrestricted warfare, not conventional warfare. And frankly, we've not really treated it this way as a country. What this report is calling for is a recognition that that is in fact a war fighting ground. And they're asking the United States to engage on that war fighting ground and recognize the battle we are already in, whether we like it or not. And look, on the point of U.S. alliances, this is important also. One issue is also getting into the United States. We want other countries to build up their own militaries. You know, this is one issue America's had. We want other countries to also, you know, pay their fair share into NATO, to build up their own militaries and not just depend on us, right, to the extent that they can. So that the United States, were an actual war to happen, is not just the only fighting force, the only major one. Now look, this actually has been more of the trend in recent years. For example, you know, U.S. allies are now beginning to grow their industrial bases. Look at Japan, for example, which for a long time was not really building up its military. Look at Australia, for example, which is now looking at more maritime operations. Look at the Philippines, for example. Look at most of Western Europe, which is now starting to wake up and realize that the, you know, war is on their doorstep and some of them are not prepared for it. Other countries are now stepping up to the plate and so the United States has an opening to help them build that and work together more closely with them on that defensive front. But the other issue is, look, again, when it comes to unrestricted warfare, we can't just think of defense as a conventional military issue. And so, especially when it comes to the CCP's business programs, for example, the Chinese Communist Party will use money and business as tools to then lobby and influence politics and even local opinion. Now, I've heard it expressed in some countries that they would choose the U.S. over the CCP on this front, but we don't offer it. For example, some countries in Latin America that are friendly towards the United States, they want to work with America. If America were offering an alternative to the CCP's Belt and Road Initiative to build industrial infrastructure, they'd take it. But we don't offer it. America does not have a system really like that. We're not competing on that front, in other words. And because there's no competition for the CCP on that front, they're dominating what they call the global south. They're dominating a lot of Asia. They're even dominating some of Europe. Look, even Italy is part of the Belt and Road Initiative. And so these countries, even Poland, for example, these countries are accepting the business side of the CCP's influence operations, which is then influencing their politics because, of course, people want to make money and a lot of politicians, of course, have to answer to the people who have money, who finance their campaigns. It has an impact on the entire system. And we're not pushing back on that front because we don't recognize that as a form of warfare. But the Chinese Communist Party does. Now there's also the issue of messaging. During the Cold War, the United States was focused on telling the American story. That's what they called it. What is our message? What does America stand for? What do we have to offer in opposition, notably, to the Chinese Communist Party? Well, what's our message right now? The United States doesn't really have one. We stopped doing this. We stopped telling the American story. We stopped promoting a moral high ground. But the propaganda front, it's huge. Because the Chinese Communist Party, they're saying, hey, we're the future. Russia is saying, we represent the Christian world and we're fighting against the liberal democratic world order. Not really true because, remember, the Russian Soviets, they took over the Russian Orthodox Church and subjugated it under the government. They're technically just a branch of the government. Same way the CCP does it in China, where notably, they destroyed Buddhism, they destroyed Taoism. Then they created state-run versions of the religion that are altered. They don't represent the actual religion. You can practice Catholicism in China, but they have, of course, CCP appointed bishops, which in no way represent the real religion. They have altered versions of the Bible. They've altered even the Ten Commandments. They knocked off the first one, notably. It's not the real religion. It's a government-run religion meant to control people using religion. But America's not pushing back on that. You know, in Iran, for example, they control the global terror movement, which also has a strong ideological base of information warfare. They have narratives that they use for propaganda to sway not just entire countries, but especially popular movements within different areas. The business community, for example, might align more with the CCP because of the propaganda of profits and so on. The different bases in other countries might align with different ideological programs launched by other countries. America doesn't do any of this anymore. We don't have a narrative anymore. We're no longer fighting on that front. And so the American story, the idea of, you know, basic human rights, the idea of what government is and the role of government, that government is instituted by people to protect rights that are given to us by God. The battle in the world, in fact, being the very idea of freedom versus socialism. You can choose which one you want. That is what America stands for. And we're no longer doing this. They're suggesting that America needs to start telling the American story again, that we need to recognize that we are in a Cold War type scenario. And a big part of that is the ideological war. Now, look, the U.S. would also have to think of weapons and defenses on newer threats, you know, things like cyber warfare, space warfare, artificial intelligence, which, of course, powers a lot of these systems now. The report notes these would be real issues that we would have to deal with. That even if we're not engaged in a physical threat against China, well, what happens if they wipe out our electric grid? What happens if they create a computer virus powered by AI which can self-replicate? What does it do then? Are we prepared for a threat like that? Well, they say we're not. Now, one of the biggest issues this commission on the National Defense Strategy report points out is the capability of the U.S. defense industrial base, and stating that U.S. industrial production is grossly inadequate, we couldn't do it, to provide the equipment needed for a greater conflict. And something in that report they missed out on, though, is the United States and its allies would also seriously need to take into account the CCP's assassin's maze, you know, surprise attack, and unconventional weapons. And this includes the risk, notably, of other things, including biological warfare. I'll be talking more about these risks only on EpicTV.com, the uncensored streaming platform of the Epoch Times. So if you're watching on YouTube, Facebook, XRumble, there's a link in the description below, click on that, you get access to the rest of this episode, and also our whole library of shows, our hard-hitting documentaries on things that really matter, like the Chinese Communist Party's 100-year plan to defeat the United States. The CCP is one of the biggest threats to America. They're using things like propaganda, video games, entertainment, movies, culture, to subvert and influence the next generation. The unrestricted war against our country is one of the scariest but least understood issues of our time, you know, because it's not tangible, it's not being done through tanks and bombs and guns, it's being done mainly through soft power and ideological subversion. Now, I've spent over a decade investigating the CCP's subversion, and it is such an important issue that I made a documentary called The Final War, which exposes this 100-year plot of the CCP's to take down America. If you'd like to find out more about what exactly the CCP is plotting against this country, watch The Final War. You can find the link in the description below, and I'll show you all the trailer before we go exclusively to EpicTV.com for the rest of this episode. I'll see you all there. The greatest threat facing the United States is the CCP. The Epic Times investigation team had studied the CCP for years, but what we uncovered was yielding evidence beyond our imagination. With Chairman Mao, with the Prime Minister, our talks have been characterized by frankness. The Clinton administration said, oh, don't worry about it. This will be a poison pill for China. China's strategic goal is to make sure that the U.S. has four enemies, and one of them must be a terrorist group. We are giving of our life's blood so that the Chinese Communist Party can survive and thrive.