For all of your life and mine one of the defining geopolitical realities has been that the United States is by far the most powerful military power in the world with the very best weapons from handguns to whatever you choose to name. Now things are changing. There is a very important trend going on yet this is the only general audience corporate media story I have seen. The United States spends more on its military-industrial complex than the next seven nations of the world combined, and yet China is becoming the most advanced military in the world, and Japan and South Korea, as this article describes, are building ships superior to their U.S. equivalents. How is this happening? Because as with everything else in the America, wealth inequity, corruption, and lack of accountability, are eating away at the foundations of our society. You can’t have a democracy without integrity.
The South Korean Navy’s Aegis destroyer King Sejong the Great, front, sails with US and Japanese ships during a joint drill off the east coast of the Korean peninsula on Feb. 22. Credit: South Korea Defense Ministry/AP
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — It’s a growing problem that has United States naval commanders scratching their heads: How to keep up with China’s ever-expanding fleet of warships.
Not only is China’s navy already the world’s largest, its numerical lead over the US is getting wider, with the head of the US Navy warning recently that American shipyards simply can’t keep up. Some experts estimate China can build three warships in the time it takes the US to build one.
It is just one of the concerns, alongside Beijing’s increasing aggression in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, that’s likely to be weighing on the mind of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as he joins top military figures from across the region at this weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
The chance of a breakthrough on any of those issues […]
