War buildup: Biden’s $1 trillion military budget

The White House released its budget request for 2024. For the Pentagon, there is $824 billion. Adding armaments for military operations in Ukraine takes that figure to more than $950 billion.

Add the $24 billion Department of Energy budget item, as the department maintains nuclear bombs and related armaments. Hidden are the budgets for the CIA and other secret military forces. Biden’s total budget for world war totals well over $1 trillion.

The Biden administration has started a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. At the same time, it is building up toward war on China, including a possible U.S. invasion of Taiwan (last September, Biden said U.S. forces are prepared to “defend” Taiwan) under some wild pretext, such as a threat from weather balloons.

Don’t laugh. That’s how every U.S. imperialist war started, like the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor — the Maine sank because of a coal-bunker fire next to the ship’s gunpowder storage, not from mines planted by Spain, as was reported at the time. “Remember the Maine” became the battle cry for launching the war with Spain in 1898. 

Like the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” in Vietnam, alleged attacks by the Vietnamese on U.S. ships that never happened but were used to authorize an all-out war on Vietnam. Like the “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed but were used to launch a war on Iraq.

As history has shown, a country that prepares for war is likely to go to war. Washington is engaged in a military buildup against China, diplomatic hostility including sanctions and trade barriers, and multiple semi-unreported operations such as basing a fleet of U.S.-crewed nuclear-powered attack submarines in Australia.

Also slipped through on March 13, the Biden administration extended U.S. capitalism’s war on the environment, approving a massive oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska.