'Golden Dome' another way to fleece US taxpayers

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration had "officially selected an architecture" for the "Golden Dome" national ballistic and cruise missile defense system it plans to develop as a necessary response to "threats" from other countries. A budget package that would provide an initial $25 billion in funding for this "state-of-the-art" project is currently being deliberated by Congress.

An unclassified assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency shows the military expects to be contending with "missile threats" that are greater in "scale and sophistication in the coming decade", noting specifically that "China and Russia are developing an array of novel delivery systems to exploit gaps in the current US ballistic missile defenses".

The other countries the United States named include the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran.

Although the US' homeland has never been attacked by any country since the end of World War II, hyping up such "threats" has become a conventional practice for the Pentagon, if not the military-industrial complex in the US, to secure funds.

The members of Congress are well aware of that but they are more than happy to give a green light to it as they invariably belong to the vested interest group that can benefit directly or indirectly from such funding deals.

China is the only country among the four portrayed by the US as a "threat" that has sizable common interests with the US in economy and trade. The US administration has to bear in mind the heavy toll it takes on Sino-US relations each time it resorts to the fallacious "China threat" rhetoric to justify what is actually some vested interest groups' embezzling of US taxpayers' money.

The "Golden Dome" is a global, multi-level, multi-domain missile defense system that goes far beyond the purpose of defense. With it in place, the US openly seeks a significant expansion of outer space-based combat capabilities, including the development and deployment of orbital interception systems.

The so-called defense system, which carries clear offensive implications and violates the principle of peaceful use of outer space as enshrined in the Outer Space Treaty, is expected to become a core component of the US' space bulwark serving as strategic intimidation to the rest of the world, accelerating the US' colonization of outer space and turning it to an extended arena for its geopolitical games.

As Mao Ning, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, warned on Wednesday, the US move will serve to heighten the risks of turning space into a war zone, and trigger an arms race.

China's development of its national defense capabilities is to safeguard its core interest and regional and world peace. It is the US that has defined China as its primary strategic challenge and acts accordingly. China still sees the US as a partner, and consequently it has exercised tremendous restraint in the face of the US' provocations under the guise of its "Indo-Pacific" strategy.

China is taking all necessary means to safeguard its security. But none of the progress China has made in this regard has the US as its target.

Be it artificial intelligence technology and cyberspace, or the outer space and the Asia-Pacific, China always proposes to the US that they should join hands to deepen their cooperation and strengthen their communication in these strategic sectors because doing so is not only in their common interest but also that of the world.

China's development cannot be checked, and China's connection with the world, including the US, cannot be severed. If the US pushes too hard to contain China and tries to separate it from the rest of the world, it is actually suppressing its own development and making itself isolated.

Also, the more the US peddles its isolationism, unilateralism and hegemony, the more space it is actually creating for China to promote cooperation, multilateralism and mutual learning and assistance in the world.

The US should accept what has become increasingly evident, that no country will become more secure by making others insecure.

- Li Yang, China Daily