Gen. Milley Surrenders On Chinese Nuke Buildup – Instead, Let’s ‘Bankrupt China’

- June 4, 2026
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged Wednesday that he threatened to “kick ass” during a heated confrontation last year, while firmly denying reports that he threatened to punch the now-acting Director of National Intelligence “in the face.”

The unusual exchange emerged during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, where Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) pressed Bessent about reports surrounding a confrontation between the two Trump administration officials during the summer of 2025.

According to Bessent, one key detail in the widely circulated account was inaccurate.

While he denied threatening.

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Seijah Drake was born in Boston, MA, where she developed a penchant for writing early on and a passion for politics in college. After college she worked briefly for a conservative media in New York before relocating to the Greater D.C. Area to pursue a career in political marketing. She now resides in the free state of Florida.

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ANALYSIS – Déjà vu all over again. Just like the establishment back in the 1960s and 1970s facing a massive Soviet nuke buildup, Team Biden and his top general, Mark Milley, are simply throwing their hands up in despair.

“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.

“They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”

Sound familiar?

Yes, this is the same top general who has overseen a cascade of woke policies at the Pentagon and thought the Capitol riot was about “white rage.”

Well, under (sometimes) conservative president Richard Nixon and his Machiavellian national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, the U.S. stopped our nuke arms race so the Soviets could catch up.

Jimmy Carter then bent over backward to appease the USSR. According to our establishment ‘nuclear luminaries’ then, nuclear parity was more stable than U.S. superiority.

Is Joe Biden hoping to do the same with China now? If not, Milley needs to wake up.

At least one expert believes America can do something to slow down the rapid rise of China’s war machine, and it doesn’t involve us unilaterally surrendering.

Gordon Chang, a respected academic, China hawk, and the author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” argues that economic warfare is America’s trump card (no pun intended).

His advice, similar to Ronald Reagan’s approach against the Soviet empire, is simply – “bankrupt China.”

Chang writes in the Daily Caller:

Milley is wrong about China’s nuclear weapons ambitions. He is, unfortunately, expressing the same pessimism that pervaded the Nixon, Ford and Carter years, when the American foreign policy establishment took the Soviet Union as a given and therefore promoted détente.

America can stop China’s nuclear weapons development and other monumental programs. The Chinese Communist Party needs America for, among other things, money, and the U.S. does not have to provide it.

Like Reagan and the Soviets before him, Chang focuses on the severe economic conditions plaguing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that are hiding in plain sight.

While in hindsight we all now accept that the USSR was a third-world country with a huge military, few see analogies with the modern, vibrant and growing Chinese economy. One that is allegedly either equal to or rapidly closing in on the United States.

But many argue China’s economy is a house of cards. Specifically, Chang identifies China’s lack of cash or liquidity.

He quotes Gregory Copley, the president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy as saying:

“The one resource which Xi Jinping’s ambition has overreached is cash. Beijing cannot, in the short term, provide the cash needed to dominate the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and other places.”

Chang adds: “The fundamental problem for the audacious Chinese ruler is that China’s economic growth is stumbling. China’s official National Bureau of Statistics reported that gross domestic product last year grew 3.0%, well below the regime’s announced target of ‘around 5.5%.’”

This is especially salient as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been steadily taking much larger slices of the Chinese economic pie. Last year, China’s military budget, according to official sources, increased 7.1% while the economy, ‘officially,’ grew only 3.0%.

The reality is likely far less.

The PLA needs more cash to keep growing. But the Chinese economy isn’t growing nearly fast enough, if at all.

That’s China’s dilemma and its Achilles heel.

Chang goes on to describe myriad factors in China’s economic stagnation before issuing his verdict: “In sum, the Chinese economy is anemic.”

“China, therefore, needs factory orders from abroad and foreign investment.”

He then makes his case for economic warfare against Beijing: “The American president can crimp both of these lifelines by, among other things, using his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by joining or liberalizing free-trade agreements with other countries.”

He adds a few other policy proposals to hit Beijing where it hurts – its pocketbook.

They may not have an immediate impact, but with a little time, they will hold China back.

Chang writes:

In the short term, therefore, China can afford its nukes, but the budget of the Chinese central government is strained because of Xi Jinping’s other grand ambitions, such as his building and maintaining an enormous surveillance state — this costs more than the Chinese military — and his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) worldwide infrastructure-building program.

The China hawk notes: “Xi has diverted the state’s resources for nuclear weapons. He can do that for a time, but soon the cash will run out.”

Chang concludes: “So here is a message for General Milley: There is a lot America can do to stop China’s fast buildup of its most dangerous arsenal, and in any case Americans must not under any circumstances fund, with trade and investment, the weapons pointed at them.”

“President Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by reducing the flow of cash to Moscow. It is now time to bankrupt China.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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Paul Crespo

Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Liberty Defense News. As a Marine Corps officer, he led Marines, served aboard ships in the Pacific and jumped from helicopters and airplanes. He was also a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies worldwide. He later ran for state and federal office, taught political science, wrote for the editorial board of a major newspaper and had his own radio show. A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten our American liberty – at home and from abroad. To read more go to: paulcrespo.com.

13 Comments
    Deplorable Mark

    Except, Red China owns our president, much of Congress, and the news and entertainment media. Also our universities.. And our economy is trashed, our diplomacy weak, and our military woke. Otherwise, a fine theory.

    Chris

    Silly Milley is our first TRANSGENDER C of the JC of S.

    MD Anthony

    Anyone tell General Milley China has the worlds largest Gold reserves and is part of the alternative Money system known as the BRICS and America has an impossible to reduce Deficit and most of the American economy is backed by worthless hedge-fund paper.
    Has Milley stopped to think that China is no longer buying US Treasury Bills and is already bankrupting America?

    Milley is the first time a fool was made head of the US military.
    What took Two Hundred years to build General Milley has wrecked during his appointment.

    Bob Nunemaker

    We can easily bankrupt China by:

    • Spending more on Defense.
    • Spreading our risk on rare Earth minerals and semi-conductors and drugs to other countries including our own.
    • Tariffs
    • Pass a law that states no company (with Fed approval) may get more than 1/3 of any part for any item from a single country other than the US.
    • Stop them from investing in farmland and energy in the US.
    • Force them to spend more money with their outposts in Panama, Venezuela, etc.
    • Many other things.
    Richard Kast

    It all comes down to the greed factor and China knows the Americas to close. They will sell their mother first. An example, our pharmacueticals, our medical products, our farm lands, shall I keep going?

    GymS

    This was being well handled 3 years ago. But comrade Xi den can’t twist the hand that is feeding him and at least 8 others in the clan.

    jhv

    The key here IMO is Biden Admin and Senate. If they don’t put our foot down on Xi and the PLA’s ambitiousness will succeed, and the U.S. in the next 25-50 years will be replaced as dominant by a much more cunning CCP and intelligent. It’s macroeconimics and strategy at play. A weak and China-beholden/bribed U.S. admin is costing America dearly, even if 2024 can reverse it. Chinese and the CCP are brilliant at playing today’s game, and we are amateur, bought out actors, at this very moment.

    Paul

    Bankrupting China will never happen under the current administration. They’re too busy bankrupting America.

    We need to get Trump back in office. He won’t mess around with anybody.

      Paul

      He’ll probably be featured next (maybe in drag?) on their cans.

    Jose Alveraz

    China enjoys a $650,000,000,000 dollar a year trade surplus with the US and has for almost 20 years. Bankrupt us is more likely

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