While Obama slashes defense, China doubles its military budget ...

Mackenzie has a great post explaining how the Obama administration is slashing defense spending to fund domestic spending?including a 50 percent increase in the transportation budget. As she correctly notes, ?President Obama?s latest defense budget proposal does not adequately resource the military?s new defense strategy, making the military?s intended emphasis on the Asia-Pacific a ?paper pivot.??

To underscore the point, while the president guts the Pentagon, China?s defense budget is headed in the opposite direction. This morning, the Wall Street Journal?s China Real Time Report has the wonderful news that Beijing is doubling its defense spending over the next three years:

China?s defense budget will double by 2015, making it more than the rest of the Asia Pacific region?s combined, according to a report from IHS Jane?s, a global think tank specializing in security issues.

Beijing?s military spending will reach $238.2 billion in 2015, compared with $232.5 billion for rest of the region, according to the report. That would also be almost four times the expected defense budget of Japan, the next biggest in the region, in 2015, the report said?.

China says its defense budget for 2011 increased by 12.7 percent to about $91.5 billion, but many defense experts believe its real military spending is much higher.

IHS Jane?s put the figure for 2011 at $119.8 billion, and predicted it would increase by an average of 18.75 percent annually until 2015.

?China?s investment will race ahead at an eye watering 18.75 percent, leaving Japan and India far behind,? said Paul Burton, senior principal analyst of IHS Jane?s Defence Budgets?.

Responding to the report, the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People?s Daily, did not dispute IHS Jane?s projections but warned against Western powers ?with an axe to grind? using China?s military budget to promote the idea of a China threat.

As China?s military grows?particularly the size and reach of its surface fleet?it is becoming more assertive of its territorial claims in the East and South China seas. Beijing is also becoming more aggressive in challenging U.S. reconnaissance flights along its coast?increasing the likelihood of another EP-3 incident like the one that greeted President Bush shortly after he took office in 2001. And China will become even more aggressive as its confidence and capabilities grow with these new military spending increases. If the Obama administration is really serious about its pivot to Asia, it needs to resource our Pacific forces accordingly. In his speech in Canberra last fall, President Obama said the United States is ?all in? in the Asia Pacific. Gutting the defense budget is no way to show it.

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Source: http://blog.american.com/2012/02/while-obama-slashes-defense-china-doubles-its-military-budget/

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