“They want us to bankrupt ourselves, that’s the goal,” said Ret. Gen. Robert Spalding, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, of China’s plan to usurp America’s global position as the leading superpower, offering his analysis in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Rick Manning.

Prior to the Trump administration, assessed Spalding, America had not effectively realigned its global strategy towards addressing geopolitical threats from an ascendant China.

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“Despite the fact that the National Security Strategy said we have entered an era of great power competition, again, we just haven’t oriented ourselves to it,” said Spalding. “In addition to the regional competition you have between Iran — which is both a Persian-Arab and a Shiite-Sunni competition — you have a global competition between the U.S. and China.”

Spalding continued, “In each of the regions … we have regional combatant commanders. In Europe you have the Russians who are causing problems for the European commander. In the Middle East you have Iran who is causing problems for the Central Command commander. In the Indo-Pacific, you have the North Koreans who are causing problems for the Pacific Command commander.”

China, stated Spalding, is the primary common denominator unifying the aformentioned regional threats to America’s global security interests. . .

China wages economic warfare against the U.S. by supporting — and enriching itself off of — America’s competitors in Asia and the Middle East.

“Since we’re in economic competition, part of that competition by the Chinese is to drain the coffers of the United States — so keep defense spending high — by keeping it pinned down in the Middle East, in Europe, and in Asia,” determined Spalding.

“When I got to the White House, one of the biggest contentions I heard was, ‘Economic security and national security have no relation whatsoever,’ and what I tried to impart on my colleagues was, ‘If you don’t have a strong economy, it doesn’t matter, because you’re not going to be able to pay for the things you need to secure yourself,’” shared Spalding.

Spalding added, “Now we’ve got an even bigger challenge because not only have we not invested in the things that actually grow the economy, like infrastructure, STEM education, and research and development, we’ve actually divested of most of our industrial base.”

China’s control of international logistics — particularly global shipping infrastructure — threatens American national security, explained Spalding.

“Today, when you talk about the defense industrial base in the United States, when China entered the WTO, we closed 78,000 factories,” recalled Spalding. “We put 5.4 million people out of work. We closed ship-building facilities. We closed so much of our manufacturing capability that today we’re heavily reliant on the Chinese to provide the things we need to fight.”. . .

“In essence, they want us to spend as much money as we can on defense, because that is not their area where they want to compete with us,” assessed Spalding. “They want us to bankrupt ourselves. That’s the goal.”

President Donald Trump, said Spalding, had reversed the status quo of America’s approach towards China set by his presidential predecessors.

(Excerpt from Breitbart News.)