Trump: We Need To Cut Global Military Spending

Feb. 15—At an informal press conference in the White House Oval Office Feb. 13, President Donald Trump characterized as insane the increasing levels of military spending by the three superpowers—Russia, China, and the U.S.—and told the world that he was prepared to do something about it.

“When things settle down, I’m going to meet with China, I’m going to meet with Russia, particularly those two,” [President Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir Putin, respectively] Trump said, “and I’m going to say there is no reason that we should be spending a trillion dollars on military, there’s no reason for you to be spending 400 billion dollars. China’s going to be at 400 billion. We’re going to be close to a trillion, and I’m going to say, ‘We can settle this [our perceived military threat to each other] and we can spend this on other things . We don’t have to spend this [much] on military.’ And I’m going to be meeting with China.”

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” Trump said.

While the U.S. and Russia already hold massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.” He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”

Trump has said something that has been a political tripwire for most world leaders: that there is really no need for the bloated military that has been imposed on this country by agents of a military-intelligence-war industry complex whose power over government President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his famous farewell address in January 1961. Their voracious appetite for weapons and power can only lead to war and ultimately threaten the existence of the nation and mankind itself. When his successor, John F. Kennedy, refused several of their directives to launch nuclear war against the Soviet Union, and to ramp up what became a disastrous war in Southeast Asia that nearly destroyed the nation, Kennedy was eliminated by assassins’ bullets—ordered, and then covered up by this network. No President since Kennedy has really challenged their power—until Donald Trump.

In his own way, and in his own words, Trump has pronounced a basic truth of the American System of physical economy: that all military spending is pure waste, and a drain on the physical economy in its mis-deployment of resources and labor power into non-productive operations. Military spending should therefore be kept to a minimum, and war is to be avoided, lest there be a negative impact on the economy. In addition, the military creates a misemployment of scientific and engineering resources, in that even if breakthroughs are made in weapons systems, the building of those systems is a negative drain on the productive economy and can lead to further risk of war, with destructive consequences. It is the case that the military, through its secrecy and classification, actually slows the diffusion of new ideas and technologies.

Trump may not understand all of the above, but his instinct as a builder and developer tells him that military spending at the levels he mentioned, is money and credit that could be more beneficially deployed by and for Americans.

The President said he has been thinking about this for a long time. He told the reporters that he had discussed it with President Putin in his previous administration, as well as with President Xi, and they were all in agreement that something should be done to reduce military spending. The COVID-19 pandemic hit and made international travel impossible for world leaders, and the initiative was put on the back burner.

Trump declared he wants to have a conference devoted to this topic and this topic alone, saying it should take place in the very near future, as soon as we straighten out the Ukraine and the Middle East. Trump said he would discuss the matter with Putin and Xi separately first, and then meet with them together to develop a plan of action: “One of the first meetings I want to have will be with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”

“People don’t realize how courageous a move it is for a President of the United States to say this,” said a source. “It amounts to an open declaration of war on this power, which is centered in the NATO Establishment and its assets here. Trump has become a real problem for these people because he has realized that NATO is a dinosaur that should have died when the Soviet Union collapsed.

"You are beginning to see how Trump looks at the world," the source continued. "He does not see Russia and China as enemies, only competitors, who we really can collaborate with, for the good of everybody. And that’s what he intends to do. He must be careful. These people already have him in their crosshairs—and they do kill Presidents or anyone else who challenges their power. Trump is not naive. He knows what is doing. He needs to keep his attack focussed and make it clear that if something happens to him, it is NATO and its assets that will be behind it."

At yesterday's Foreign Ministry briefing in Beijing, spokesman Guo Jiakun replied to a reporter’s question about President Trump’s remarks. Unfortunately, the reporter spun those remarks as if they were only about nuclear arms reduction, and not a global reduction in all military spending, and Guo responded accordingly.

“The United States and Russia, as the largest nuclear-weapon states, should effectively fulfil their special priority responsibility for nuclear disarmament,” Guo said. “Further drastic and substantive reductions in nuclear weapons should be made [by the two nations] in order to create the necessary conditions for other nuclear-weapon states to join the nuclear disarmament process.”

China’s nuclear policy was based on “self-defense” and it maintains its forces at “the lowest level necessary for its national security,” he said. “The US advocates for ‘America First,’ then it should set an example by prioritizing reductions in military spending.”

The Trump proposal has gotten extensive coverage in the Chinese media and is no doubt a matter of intense discussion. An article in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that President Putin had invited President Trump to attend the celebrations in Moscow on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9, noting that, if Trump were to go, it would set the stage for a possible tripartite meeting between the three leaders. What they do not say is that May 9 under a leaked schedule for the implementation of the Trump peace plan for the Ukraine is the target date for the announcement of the final terms of the agreement to end the bloody conflict between NATO, using its Ukraine proxy, and Russia. Sources say that this would make a Trump appearance in Moscow highly likely. Xi has already accepted Putin's invitation tom attend.