The U.S.: A “Global Policeman” with Huge Debts

The Hong Kong newspaper Wenweipo published an article on Aug. 30 stating that the United States uses the self-given title “global policeman” actually to promote global hegemony; and in order to support the army in the long term, the U.S. has accrued substantial debts. Although the U.S. has confirmed that suppressing Chinese development is a national goal, the U.S. economy has been in decline since the 2008 global economic crisis. In terms of military conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. “intends to be involved but doesn’t have the economy to support such intentions.”

The article is as follows:

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden paid a six-day official visit to China beginning on Aug. 17. During a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Biden emphasized that the U.S. government attaches great importance to the safety and stability of U.S. Treasury bonds. On Aug. 21, at a speech at Sichuan University, Biden reiterated that the debts that the Chinese government bought are safe.

The main reason why Biden kept reassuring Chinese leaders and citizens about the credibility of U.S. debts is that Congress just passed President Obama’s debt-ceilling deal to increase the debt limit from $14.29 trillion to $16.39 trillion in order to prevent a debt violation crisis from occurring. The nominal gross domestic product of the U.S. in 2010 is $14.52 trillion, and the growth rate of 2.9 percent means that even if U.S. citizens had spent all of this year’s GDP to service U.S. debt, they would still not have been able to repay all debts.

However, the agreement to increase the debt ceiling and decrease the federal deficit is not unconditional. One condition is to cut $35 billion in national defense expenditures in the next decade. The new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, nevertheless, warned that considerable cuts in future defense expenditure will threaten U.S. national security.

Since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. has spent $321 billion in direct military expenditures. The average annual expenditure in Afghanistan is is $3.2 billion. In addition, the U.S.’s total military expenditure in Iraq has reached $784 billion since the military invasion in 2003. The average annual cost is $98 billion. Even though the 2008 global economic crisis reduced the GDP in 2009 by 2.66 percent, the 2010 defense budget still reached $692.3 billion, which made up 43 percent of the world’s total defense budget and was 34 percent more than 2009’s $515.4 billion. The 2012 U.S. defense budget is $707.4 billion, in which military spending overseas (including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) amount to $117.5 billion, 17 percent of the total budget. These is the price that the U.S. has to pay for the name of “global policeman” and the promotion of global hegemony.

Although the debts are appreciable, U.S. global military deployments will increase. Aside from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in July 2010, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at the ASEAN meeting held in Hanoi, Vietnam, claimed that the U.S. will “return to Asia” and accentuate the U.S.’s priority to the never-stated “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. Conspicuously, the U.S. has tried to take advantage of the South China Sea issue and unite Vietnam, the Philippines and other ASEAN countries to repress and contain China. 　　

Even though the U.S. has confirmed that one of its national goals is to comprehensively repress Chinese development, since the eruption of the global economic crisis in 2008, the U.S. economy has been gradually deteriorating and has even been threatened by a second deterioration. In addition, the U.S. is busy with the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Therefore, regarding military conflicts in Asia-Pacific area, the U.S. “merely has the intention but doesn’t possess the economic ability to become involved.”