It's only appropriate that at a time when the senile commander in chief is preparing to unleash several mushroom clouds of "world peace" - which is code for the Nobel prize committee to give the "big guy" his long overdue Peace Prize as the world teeters over the edge of one or more world wars...
.... that a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel said on Thursday that the United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances and enhancing its nuclear weapons modernization program.
The report from the Strategic Posture Commission - which appears to be nothing more than a ghost writer for the Military Industrial Complex and its identical twin, the deep state, both of which stand to make quadrillions should the US jump right into the coming world war, comes amid tensions with China over Taiwan and other issues and worsening frictions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
"The United States and its allies must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously," the Strategic Posture Commission said. "The U.S.-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes."
Some more details: congress in 2022 created the panel of six Democrats and six Republicans to assess long-term threats to the United States and recommend changes in U.S. conventional and nuclear forces. The panel accepted a Pentagon forecast that China's rapid nuclear arsenal expansion likely will give it 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, confronting the United States with a second major nuclear-armed rival for the first time.
The Chinese and Russian threats will become acute in the 2027-2035 timeframe so "decisions need to be made now in order for the nation to be prepared," said the 145-page report. The report also said the 30-year U.S. nuclear arms modernization program, which began in 2010 and was estimated in 2017 to cost around $400 billion by 2046, must be fully funded to upgrade all warheads, delivery systems and infrastructure on schedule.
Other recommendations included deploying more tactical nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe, developing plans to deploy some or all reserve U.S. nuclear warheads, and production of more B-21 stealth bombers and new Columbia-class nuclear submarines beyond the numbers now planned.
It wasn't immediately clear if the report assumed that Russia and China would just sit there an quietly applaud as the US doubled its tactical nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe.
The panel also called for boosting the "size, type, and posture" of U.S. and allied conventional forces. If such measures are not taken, the United States "will likely" have to increase its reliance on nuclear weapons, the report said.
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Cited by Reuters, a senior official involved in the report declined to say if the panel's intelligence briefings showed any Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons cooperation.
"We worry ... there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war construct," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The findings would upend current U.S. national security strategy calling for winning one conflict while deterring another and - most importantly - require huge defense spending increases with uncertain congressional support. Which, one can argue, is precisely the impetus behind the report because at a time when the interest expense on US debt is about to surpass defense spending in the $1+ trillion spending category.
And sure enough: "We do recognize budget realities, but we also believe the nation must make these investments," the Democratic chair, neocon Madelyn Creedon, a former deputy head of the agency that oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, and the vice chair, Jon Kyl, a retired Republican senator, said in the report's preface.
Addressing a briefing held to release the report, Kyl said the president and Congress must "take the case to the American people" that higher defense spending is a small price to pay "to hopefully preclude" a possible nuclear war involving the United States, China and Russia.
So... the US must double its defense spending (call it $1 trillion -> $2 trillion) to deter not one but two nuclear powers, just so there is no nuclear war?
That sounds awfully like the strategy that brought down the USSR. Which considering the level of Marxism in the US these days, may not be the worst strategy.
For now, the big guy hasn't realized that his "10" will be much bigger if he greenlights the pursuit and prepayment of nuclear war on two fronts: the report contrasts with U.S. President Joe Biden's position that the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is sufficient to deter the combined forces of Russia and China. But at the rate the walls are closing in on the Biden family, we expect it won't be long before Biden realizes that to make the decisionmakers in Stockholm happy and receives the same ridiculous peace "award" that Barack also got, he will need to double down to war.