Pentagon generals are doing their best to imitate the predictive performance of American writer Gordon G. Chang. Since the publication of his infamous The Coming Collapse of China in 2001, he has been predicting the imminent demise of the country every year. More recently, the honchos at the US Defence Department are taking turns to forecast a date for mainland China’s invasion of Taiwan. The latest comes straight from General Mike Minihan, chief of the US Air Mobility Command, who has set a date for war between China and the United States over the island in 2025. “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” the four-star general wrote in a “leaked” memo. “Xi [Jinping]’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.” This has become a regular ritual from the Pentagon. Last March, when he was still head of US Indo-Pacific command, Admiral Philip Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the mainland could try to seize Taiwan “in the next six years”. US Navy should plan for an invasion of Taiwan this year, fleet chief says In October, Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of US naval operations, was even more specific. He said it could have happened in November or December, or this year. But he also hedged his prediction, saying it could take place any time up to 2027. Meanwhile, President Tsai Ing-wen and her pro-secessionist Democratic Progressive Party have been more than happy to play along, as they aim to irreversibly turn the island into a satellite territory and military launching pad of the US. Parroting the US generals, the island’s foreign minister Joseph Wu said this month that he expected the mainland to invade to distract from Xi’s domestic problems, and that it was most likely to happen in 2027, but also any time before. Invade to distract? Seriously? Instead of taking their forecast seriously, perhaps it’s more relevant to ask why they are doing it. It seems the island and the Pentagon, among other US government departments, are bent on keeping tensions high across the Taiwan Strait. Even the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, one of 12 banks under the US Federal Reserve System, has got in on the act. Early this month, it published a study of the military spending of the top countries along with a graphic that has since gone viral. The graph is so misleading that it has been widely ridiculed. Even the bank itself subsequently issued a “clarification”, but not a retraction, claiming its intention was for easy comprehension. Really? The red line in the graph below indicates China’s military spending. If you only take a cursory look while not having followed this particular issue before, you would immediately think China outspends everyone, including the US. But of course, that’s just absurd. That would, of course, give you the chills, as it was supposed to. What happens is that China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom all have their military budgets referenced to the y-axis on the left while the US alone is referred to the y-axis on the right. An analysis looks at how defense spending among the nations with the highest expenditures has changed since 1992 and what may have driven the changes https://t.co/3ln08vOKAo pic.twitter.com/yqK6MqwQUm — St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) January 22, 2023 Ben Norton of the Geopolitical Economy Report has helpfully rescaled the graphic so every country’s military spending refers to the same y-axis . Here’s what it should look like. In reality, the US has always outspent everyone by a wide margin. Its military budget last year (US$801 billion) dwarfed those of the next nine countries – China, India, the UK, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea – combined (US$777 billion), according to the database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published last April. And while China has been increasing its military spending in absolute terms, it has remained constant relative to its gross domestic product, at or under 2 per cent. In fact, its defence spending in 2021 was 1.7 per cent of GDP, which was among the lowest of the great powers. The question that needs to be asked is the same as that for the Pentagon generals: why is the St Louis Fed even doing this at this time when other US government departments and independent think tanks have been doing it much better and for much longer? The only conclusion is that the China threat has to be drummed into the public, at least those in the West and especially the US, all the time and everywhere. With the return of cold war rhetoric and propaganda, it has become an all-of-government strategy. But for those outside the Matrix, though, you have to ask who is really threatening whom?