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‘We Are Preparing for War’ With China ‘Threat’, Says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.

By Ben Norton, 5 June 25, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06/06/preparing-war-china-threat-us-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth/

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war”.

“Those who long for peace, must prepare for war. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war, in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength”, Hegseth stated.

The top Donald Trump administration official made these aggressive remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025, a summit held in Singapore on 31 May.

“The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not, but it certainly could be”, Hegseth claimed, indicating that the Pentagon was preparing for a war over Taiwan.

“Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China”, he stressed.

The message of Trump’s Pentagon: war is peace

The Trump administration’s Pentagon has essentially pushed the message “war is peace”.

Hegseth has incessantly reiterated the slogan “peace through strength”.

“President Trump said it himself [in May] in Riyadh – and will never hesitate to wield American power swiftly and decisively if necessary. That is re-establishing deterrence”, the defense secretary emphasized in Singapore.

Hegseth is a war hawk and a religious fundamentalist. He made his name as a former host on the conservative TV network Fox News, where Trump discovered him.

In 2020, Hegseth published a book called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly identified as a “crusader” and wrote that the US right wing is waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, he promised in the extremist book.

Trump admin pressures Asia-Pacific countries to minimize “economic cooperation with China”

In his speech in Singapore in May 2025, Pete Hegseth noted that it was his second time in his four months serving as secretary of defense that he had visited the Asia-Pacific region (which Washington has sought to rebrand as the “Indo-Pacific”).

In March, Hegseth traveled to Japan and the Philippines, where he threatened China and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Hegseth half-jokingly threatened the Asia-Pacific region with his endless presence……………………………..

The Trump administration essentially told countries that they must choose between either the United States or China — that they can’t have good relations with both sides, because a war could be coming soon.

Hegseth said (emphasis added):

Facing these threats, we know that many countries are tempted by the idea of seeking both economic cooperation with China and defense cooperation with the United States. Now that is a geographic necessity for many. But beware the leverage that the CCP seeks with that entanglement. Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension.

China opposes hegemony, while the US empire seeks it

Defense Secretary Hegseth claimed in his May speech in Singapore that, supposedly, “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt”.

This is false. China has consistently emphasized, over decades, that it does not seek hegemony. In fact, Beijing does not want any country to have hegemony.

Principled opposition to hegemony has been a constant since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in 1949, through the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and into the New Era launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012.

The Chinese government has always stressed what it calls its “unequivocal commitment to supporting other developing countries in their efforts to defend national sovereignty, develop national economy and fight imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism”.

In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Deng Xiaoping stated, “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression, and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it, and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.

In fact, when the PRC normalized diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan in the 1970s, a source of diplomatic tension was China’s insistence that, in the joint statements signed by Beijing and Washington and Beijing and Tokyo, there had to be an “anti-hegemony” clause.

It is actually the United States that has consistently sought to impose its hegemony on the rest of the world.

This was spelled out clearly in a 1992 document published by the US Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US under secretary of defense for policy, before later returning as secretary of defense under George W. Bush).

The Pentagon’s Wolfowitz Doctrine stated (emphasis added):

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy is still consistent with much of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).

In fact, the main theme of Hegseth’s speech was that the Pentagon will not accept China challenging US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We will not be pushed out of this critical region”, Hegseth said, in a clear message to Beijing.

This was the US empire stating clearly that it seeks to impose its hegemonic control over East Asia.

Bipartisan warmongering in Washington

This aggressive anti-China stance is bipartisan in Washington.

A former top Joe Biden administration official said he agreed with the thrust of the anti-China policy pursued by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing extremist and religious fanatic.

Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden’s Pentagon, wrote approvingly on Twitter/X, “Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth’s speech was near total continuity with the previous administration”.

“That’s good, but we’ll need heightened urgency, attention, and resources to address the China challenge”, Ratner added.

Biden’s neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also maintained a hardline anti-China position.

In a speech in 2022, Blinken announced what was essentially a containment policy targeting China.

“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.

Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before”.

June 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As US military prepares for war on China, Silicon Valley tech oligarchs are profiting

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

The US military is preparing for war on China. It has missile systems in the Philippines aimed at major Chinese cities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the USA is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”. Silicon Valley Big Tech oligarchs are making hugely profitable investments.

By Ben Norton, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/04/28/us-military-war-china-silicon-valley/

Evidence grows showing that the US military is setting the stage for war on China.

A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post reveals that the US Department of Defense has made preparing for war with China into its top priority, giving it precedence over all other issues.

The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert US control over Taiwan.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a fundamentalist self-declared “crusader” who called for overthrowing the Chinese government, took a trip in March to Japan and the Philippines, where he repeatedly threatened Beijing and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

In 2024, the US military installed its Typhon missile system in the northern Philippines. This has a range of 1,240 miles (roughly 2,000 kilometers), and can hit most major cities on the Chinese mainland.

The United States has access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this “new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance”.

The newspaper added that it “is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders”.

This blatant US provocation has caused outrage in Beijing, which sees the Pentagon’s move as a significant escalation of Washington’s new cold war on China.

Cold War Two

Cold War Two has more and more parallels to Cold War One.

Students in US schools are often taught that the Soviet Union’s deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis was an act of “aggression”. Their classes usually omit the fact the United States first put nuclear weapons in NATO member Turkey in 1959, provoking Moscow.

Today, Washington is provoking Beijing in many domains.

Donald Trump launched a unilateral, aggressive trade war on China in 2018, during his first term.

Trump’s Democratic successor, Joe Biden, not only continued this trade war but expanded it further, adding more tariffs and export restrictions in an attempt to strangle China’s high-tech sector.

Now in his second term, Trump has waged a nuclear trade war on China, threatening tariffs of 245%.

This new cold war has become a lucrative enterprise for some US oligarchs.

Silicon Valley oligarchs hope to profit from US war on China

Big Tech capitalists in Silicon Valley have poured money into new weapons systems, hoping to profit off of war on China.

The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2024 titled “Tech Bros Are Betting They Can Help Win a War With China”. It featured an interview with right-wing billionaire Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive who founded the arms manufacturer Anduril Industries.

Anduril has established itself as a significant Pentagon contractor, with its work developing advanced autonomous weapons.

The Wall Street Journal wrote (emphasis added):

These weapons, Luckey argues, are needed for a potential conflict with China, which the Pentagon two years ago announced is the greatest danger to U.S. security. The U.S. military, Luckey and others say, needs large numbers of cheaper and more intelligent systems that can be effective over long stretches of ocean and against a manufacturing and technological power like China.

Anduril is so focused on a conflict with Beijing, Luckey says, that many teams inside the company are building only weapons that can be completed by 2027—the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has said his country should be prepared to invade Taiwan. The fictional sword for which Anduril is named [from the Lord of the Rings] is also called the “Flame of the West.”

“We keep our eyes on the prize, which is great-power conflict in the Pacific,” Luckey said.

The newspaper highlighted how the US military-industrial complex has become increasingly privatized.

There has been a rapid influx of venture capital funds into weapons corporations in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reported (emphasis added):

Anduril is part of one of the largest shifts to take place in the defense sector since World War II: the flow of venture-capital funding into defense-technology companies.

For decades, the U.S. government funded defense companies, like Lockheed Martin, to develop new weapons, ranging from stealth aircraft to spy satellites. But as the private-sector money available for research and development has outstripped federal-government spending, particularly in areas like AI, a new cohort of defense startups is using private capital to develop technology for the Pentagon.

The amount of private capital flowing into the venture-backed defense-tech industry has ballooned, with investors spending at least 70% more on the sector each of the past three years than any prior year. From 2021 through mid-June 2024, venture capitalists invested a total of $130 billion in defense-tech startups, according to data firm PitchBook. The Pentagon spends about $90 billion on R&D annually.

A major investor in Anduril is Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

Thiel is a far-right billionaire oligarch who has strongly supported Donald Trump and has funded Republican politicians. He even previously employed US Vice President JD Vance, and bankrolled his successful 2022 Senate campaign.

A former FBI informant, Thiel co-founded another major Pentagon contractor, Palantir, which the CIA helped to fund.

Thiel is also an extreme anti-China hawk. He openly defends monopolies, arguing “competition is for losers”, and wants to ban Chinese competitors to US Big Tech monopolies.

Like Thiel, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is staunchly pro-Trump. He is from the same community of far-right Silicon Valley oligarchs.

The Financial Times reported that Thiel’s Palantir, Luckey’s Anduril, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sought to create a “consortium” — or, rather, a cartel — to jointly bid for US government contractors.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wages “holy war” on China, from Japan and the Philippines

Trump has surrounded himself with a team of war hawks, including neoconservative Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth personally signed the Pentagon document obtained by the Washington Post that showed that the number one priority of the US military is preparing for war with China over Taiwan.

In this memo, which is officially known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance”, the Pentagon wrote, “China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario”.

The Washington Post revealed that several parts of this document were copied word-for-word from a vehemently anti-China report published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, DC-based think tank that is funded by large corporations and conservative billionaires.

The oligarch-backed Heritage Foundation organized the notorious Project 2025, which crafted a detailed policy program for the Trump administration to implement.

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, Hegseth pledged in the book. He wrote, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.

In March 2025, Hegseth traveled to Asia to pressure US allies to join Washington in its new cold war on China. The Wall Street Journal summarized his trip with the headline “Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China”.

When he spoke in Japan, Hegseth vowed to “strengthen our bilateral bonds and deepen our operational cooperation” against Beijing.

The US defense secretary stated that the Pentagon is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”.

Japan previously colonized China. The Japanese empire, which later allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, killed tens of millions of people in China and other parts of Asia in the 1930s and ’40s.

“America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the Communist Chinese”, Hegseth asserted, fearmongering about “the severe nature of the threat”.

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war”, the US defense secretary said. “We must be prepared. We look forward to working closely together as we improve our war-fighting capabilities, our lethality, and our readiness”.

Hegseth articulated “three pillars” of the Trump administration’s Pentagon strategy: “Reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and restoring deterrence”.

The US defense secretary made similarly aggressive comments in the Philippines, blasting what he called “communist China’s aggression in the region”.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

At a press conference in the Philippines, Hegseth spoke of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command. He said (emphasis added):

It’s not my job to determine where the Seventh Fleet goes. I defer to Admiral Paparo and his war plans. Real war plans. Admiral Paparo understands the situation, understands the geographic significance, understands the urgency, and is prepared to work with those in the region to ensure we are leaning forward in our posture. Not waiting for events to develop, not retrograding to places further from the front, but deploying capabilities forward, posturing and creating dynamics and strategic dilemmas for the Communist Chinese, that help them reconsider whether or not violence or action is something they want to undertake.

During the first cold war, the US hosted a military base on Taiwan, where it stored nuclear weapons.

In the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, top US military officials wanted to attack the Chinese mainland with nuclear bombs, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower preferred conventional weapons.

May 1, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hegseth Orders Pentagon To Focus on Preparing for War With China Over Taiwan

In an internal memo, Hegseth called China the ‘sole pacing threat’

by Dave DeCamp March 30, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/30/hegseth-orders-pentagon-to-focus-on-preparing-for-war-with-china-over-taiwan/

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth distributed a memo in mid-March ordering the Pentagon to put its focus on preparing for a war with China, a nuclear-armed power, by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The Post didn’t publish the full memo, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance, but said it “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the ‘near abroad,’ including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”

The Pentagon has considered China the top “threat” facing the US since the first Trump administration, but the Post report said the memo is “extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers — reorienting the vast US military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region beyond its homeland defense mission.”

The report said that the guidance from Hegseth says the Pentagon’s force planning construct “will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war” and leave the “threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies.”

Hegseth wrote that China “is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”

The memo reflects the Trump administration’s policy toward Europe and calls for NATO allies to take a “far greater” burden sharing. The document says that the US is unlikely to provide substantial support to Europe if Russia’s military advances in the region, saying the US will only provide nuclear deterrence.

The memo also calls for the US to pressure Taiwan to increase military spending “significantly.”

For years now, the US military has been openly preparing for war with China despite the risk of nuclear escalation. It has done this by expanding military bases in the Asia Pacific, building alliances, and increasing support for Taiwan. While being done in the name of deterrence, these steps have only increased tensions in the region, making conflict more likely.

The Post report says that Hegseth’s plans to prepare a “denial defense” of Taiwan include “increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets.” His memo also calls for increasing the defenses of US troop positions in the region and establishing more weapons stockpiles.

April 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hegseth Circulated Secret Pentagon Memo On Preparing For War With China

by Tyler Durden, Tuesday, Apr 01, 2025, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hegseth-circulated-secret-pentagon-memo-preparing-war-china

Over the weekend The Washington Post revealed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth distributed a memo in mid-March which ordered the Pentagon to prioritize its war-planning focus on potential future conflict with China.

The memo, called the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the ‘near abroad,’ including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”

It’s nothing new that the Pentagon considers China a ‘top pacing threat’ – but it does confirm that the Trump administration would likely be willing to go to war in the event of a mainland invasion of the self-ruled island.

The memo interestingly presented a strategy of “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, to refocus efforts on top nuclear-armed rivals. 

The Pentagon’s force planning and new focus “will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war” and leave the “threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies” – according to the report.

Hegseth wrote that China “is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”

The memo urges NATO allies take on a “far greater” burden-sharing on defense, and puts Europe on notice in the event of greater threats from Russia:

Hegseth’s guidance acknowledges that the U.S. is unlikely to provide substantial, if any, support to Europe in the case of Russian military advances, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary defense of the region. The U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, and NATO should only count on U.S. forces not required for homeland defense or China deterrence missions, the document says.

A significant increase in Europe sharing its defense burden, the document says, “will also ensure NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the United States is already engaged in, or must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”

As for Taiwan specifically, it lays out ways the Pentagon intends to help its ally bolster defenses, short of outright entering any direct conflict.

WaPo and others have said the Heritage Foundation think tank is the driving force behind the strategic ideas presented in the memo.

Hegseth’s plans specify a “denial defense” of Taiwan – according to the memo – which will include “increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets.” 

April 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment