US approves unprecedented funding for military: Activist

The United States have spent at least $20 trillion on war and militarism around the world for more than two decades since September 11, 2001, and approves unprecedented funding for military for the next year, an anti-war activist says.

Richard Becker, an anti-war activist from San Francisco made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Friday, reacting to Senate approval of unprecedented $858 billion military budget known as National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), now heads to the White House for Biden’s signature.

The Senate has passed a bill authorizing a record $858 billion in annual military spending, more than what had been requested by President Joe Biden, signaling more intensified US interventionism abroad.

“These are Unthinkable and unimaginable funds. I mean it's very hard for us to even begin to wrap our minds around what these kinds of numbers mean. 858 billion dollars! How does one calculate that! But it certainly does. Its purpose is not to protect the people of the United States. There’s nobody threatening the United States. There's no country that would be so wild and out of control that it would do that. It's for supporting the Empire and it's a worldwide Empire which is kept in power and in place by militarism,” Becker said.

US Senate passes record $858bn military spending bill, sends to Biden's desk

The United States Senate has passed a bill authorizing a record $858 billion in annual military spending, more than what had been requested by President Joe Biden, signaling more intensified US interventionism abroad.

He further emphasized that the budget of 858 billion dollars does not include CIA’s expenses, and last year, the US Congress budgeted 25 billion dollars separately for CIA and the other intelligence agencies’ expenses.

“Great deal of the overall budget of the United States, really more than half of the discretionary budget of the United States goes to militarism and at a time when there is great need and great suffering around the world and inside the United States as the fundamental problems of lack of Health Care, adequate housing, adequate food and clean water, a clean environment, these problems could be addressed and overcome if those kind of funds were spent not on war but on meeting the needs of the people of the country and in the world,” added Becker.

The fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes $858 billion in military spending and includes a 4.6 percent pay increase for the troops, funding for purchases of weapons, ships and aircraft, and billions of dollars in military assistance and fast-tracked weapons procurement for Taiwan.

"This is the most important bill we do every year," Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

'US has illusion of regime change in Russia'

Don Debar, activist and commentator from New York also pointed out that it was not possible to give an exact answer to the question whether, despite the financial problems, the United States wanted to prolong the war in Ukraine or not, saying “the United States have the illusion or the delusion that they're going to be able to recreate 1991 and have the Russian Federation collapse and be dismantled by making War.”

Pointing out that the military conflict in Ukraine is actually a proxy war between Russia and the United States and its European allies, he emphasized that it seems that tensions are increasing at a very high speed and if the conflict continues at this speed, we may experience World War III “pretty quickly at the moment”.

The fiscal 2023 NDAA provides Ukraine with at least $800 million in additional military assistance next year.

Ever since the beginning of the Ukraine war, Kiev’s Western allies, led by the US, have been supplying the former Soviet Republic with advanced weapons while slapping Russia with a slew of sanctions, despite Moscow's warning that it will only prolong the conflict.

The US alone has supplied Ukraine with more than $19 billion worth of military aid since Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine on February 24.

The colossal military bill comes as no surprise, since America's foreign policy is based on interventionism, as it remains unable to influence or control other minor or major powers without the use of force.

According to a new study on US military interventions in August, the Military Intervention Project said the US has undertaken almost 400 military interventions since its founding in 1776 until 2019, of which more than 200 happened after WWII.

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