Why the US Can Never Match Chinese Shipbuilding

October 17, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In a recent Business Insider article and accompanying video regarding the US’ $66 billion plan to “beat China’s shipbuilding empire,” it is revealed that US plans ultimately amount to unlikely solutions to what are deep, systemic problems with little political appetite to face, let alone address - a microcosm of the US’ wider terminal decline relative to the emerging multipolar world. 

In the video, an American shipyard worker is seen wearing a helmet with a sticker saying, “Go Navy, Beat China,” China - a nation that has never attacked the United States - and instead has been subject to US encroachment, occupation, and war both before and after the World Wars - exemplifying the delusional belligerence US interests encourage among the American public and specifically those among the US military and across its military industrial base. 

Detached even further from reality is the notion of the US “beating China” in the realm of shipbuilding where China is reported to build between 1,000 to 1,700 ships a year while the US builds ships in single digit numbers. 

While the video discusses plans by the US to invest in shipbuilding through expanding the workforce with training programs, improve worker retention, and through the use of new technology to produce more with less, and even plans to have US proxies build ships for the US - no plans were announced to address the systemic problems creating this disparity in shipbuilding capacity in the first place.

The problems stymying US shipbuilding (and all other productive industries in the US) are problems no amount of investment or technology can solve until the root causes themselves are addressed. 

US-China Shipbuilding Gap is a Symptom of Bigger Problems 

The atrophy of US shipbuilding has not taken place in a vacuum or overnight. 

It has been in decline alongside all other major productive American industries and for generally the same reasons. The US has spent decades prioritizing shareholder primacy (the pursuit of perpetually expanding profits) at the expense of all other considerations - including industrial capacity, national infrastructure, American education, and the workforce the US educational system is tasked with creating. 

The US - in pursuit of perpetual profits - has reorganized its economy from a global industrial leader, to a financialized ponzi-economy building wealth across ledgers rather than upon factory floors.

The US educational system reflects this reprioritization - not only in redirecting students from productive vocations to better serve the ponzi-economy - but also in the form of maximizing profits to access the education system itself. This has been done through expanding privatization across primary and secondary education, and across all forms of higher education. Young adults find themselves faced with tens of thousands of US dollars in debt before starting their first step in any chosen career. 

This has created not only a critical shortage of workers for the US industrial base, it has created a systemic obstacle that must be removed before that critical shortage of workers can even be addressed. Reforming US education alone, is a process that could take a generation to solve. 

An atrophied workforce is only one of several systemic problems the US faces. The other takes the shape of national infrastructure, including transportation, energy production and distribution, and the very facilities at which shipbuilding and other forms of industrial activity take place. 

Because the US functions as a for-profit system where the “private sector” is responsible for all of the above - and because profits are always easier to make through financialization and/or legacy industrial processes (making money by doing or selling the same thing over and over again) - the chances of the “private sector” investing in the infrastructure and facilities required to even expand US shipbuilding significantly, let alone meaningfully close the gap with China, are next to non-existent. 

US Project Meridian” - A Symptom of American Decline, Not a Solution

October 12, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced the creation of the 120 day task force, “Project Meridian.” 

On the US Department of Defense’s website it says the project aims, “to secure America's long-term military superiority by identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield.” 

At face value, the initiative serves as a further symptom of the US’ terminal decline rather than any sort of path toward “long-term military superiority” or “absolute technological dominance.” 

The necessity of the project itself is an oblique admission of current and growing US military weakness - increasingly on display amid US wars and proxy wars worldwide in which US weapons are both falling behind in capabilities and quantities. 

The stated path the project seeks to take to address this growing military weakness - “leveraging the nation's premier private-sector innovators, business leaders, and technologists” to “discover and accelerate the fielding of advanced systems” -  ignores completely the fundamentals of the US system which is directly responsible for this growing weakness and dysfunction relative to the rising multipolar world and especially China, in the first place. 

The idea that future technologies and “wonder weapons” can somehow restore US military power around the globe in the face of a rising multipolar world order ignores the pressing fundamental questions regarding why the US seeks to project military power worldwide to begin with, whether it is necessary or not, and whether it is sustainable or even possible to do so. 

The Root of the Problem 

The “private-sector” - large corporate-financier monopolies predicated on the perpetual pursuit of profit and power (driven by shareholder primacy) and which have captured and control US foreign and domestic policy toward that end - are what drives the US’ global military presence and the “need” for “long-term military superiority.” .

The multitude of wars, proxy wars, and potential wars the US is instigating at any given time around the globe are aimed at eliminating any obstacle to the power and profit of this “private-sector” and to implement the coercion of and control over nations and regions the US has already successfully subordinated. 

Thus, this military power is not used to uphold the legitimate national security of the people and territory of the United States - but as a means of undermining and overcoming the national security of other people and territories abroad. 

Proponents of US primacy would argue that if the US did not seek global primacy, others would - a false premise based on an interpretation of “realism” that assumes all people and nations are driven by the same sociobiological need to “dominate” as the special interests and the system they've created in the West. 

Back in reality - nations currently exist in parallel to the US with the ability to project military power globally but have deliberately chosen not to - including both Russia and China - and only develop and use military force in reaction to US encirclement, encroachment, and aggression (by proxy or otherwise). 

The systems of governance and economics in nations outside the West are likewise built from the foundation up in a fundamentally different manner - one in which the rational nature of humanity - not an inherent sociobiological desire for dominance - guides nations and their policies for specific people-driven purposes (accessible healthcare and education, modern infrastructure, etc.) rather than solely profit and power. 

By doing so, these nations ensure access to wealth and influence, but in a sustainable manner - the difference between hungry chimpanzees in the jungle stripping bare fruit trees and humans who have learned to to grow and farm for food. Both are driven by hunger - one chooses the most direct (and ultimately unsustainable) means of satisfying that hunger - while the other chooses to leverage ingenuity to overcome natural limitations on available food supplies. 

 

If nations do not seek to threaten the US - or even develop the capabilities to do so - this means the entire premise of “Project Meridian” is based on not only a wholly unnecessary imperative, but one at cross purpose with international law, endangering global peace and stability. There is an added irony to the growing military and economic crisis consuming the West - it is created by this unsustainable and unnecessary pursuit of global primacy - not by some threat the rest of the globe poses to the West or the United States. 

US Cannibalizes Its Proxies and Itself as War on Multipolarism Expands

September 29, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - For decades, the US has leveraged its many client states as extensions of its own military, economic, financial, and political power, recruiting the Western world and its dependencies into war, proxy war, economic coercion, and for generating the illusion of political legitimacy for US actions worldwide. 

All of this is a continuation of the British Empire’s use of its colonies to help fight its wars and maintain global primacy up to and including throughout the World Wars. 

And just as the British Empire increasingly leaned on its colonies as its power waned in its final years, extracting blood and treasure from them, draining and destroying them in the process - the US is increasingly leaning on its client states as its war on multipolarism expands against a reemerging Russia, a rising China, and a persistent Iran and many nations in between. 

Just as the British used a combination of administrative control and political propaganda to induce obedience across its colonies, the US is using its political capture of its client states and unprecedented information dominance to maneuver its client states into position for war and proxy war and to justify the growing expenditure on military power at the expense of social programs and even economic viability - both at home and across its modern day empire. 

The Burden Sharing Network 

Spanning the Obama, first Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations, the US has increasingly introduced a combination of political, economic, and military alliances used to consolidate US power worldwide. 

This includes everything from the “Quad,” to “AUKUS,” from an ever-expanding NATO to faux anti-US alliances like Europe’s Ukraine-centric “coalition of the willing” and proposed European Union “associate membership” for Canada. All of these arrangements are meant to streamline the administrative process of leveraging regional power across multiple client states together with political narratives meant to bring as many people within these targeted nations on board with the use of these nations against targets of US foreign policy objectives. 

The Quad and AUKUS use fabricated threats of “Chinese expansion” and “aggression” to dupe millions across Asia-Pacific into transferring tremendous and still-growing amounts of resources from national development toward military spending and potential confrontation with China itself. 

The so-called “coalition of the willing,” a recycled term from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, along with the EU associate membership proposed for Canada is aimed at fabricating the threat of an “invading Russia” to leverage further resources for Washington’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. 

In West Asia, the US is using the so-called “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement” and the “Abraham Accords” to consolidate its client states in the region together despite decades of contradicting propaganda narratives maintaining a US strategy of tension across the region focused on Israel. 

Manufactured public hatred and/or fear is used to drive these various attempts to consolidate the resources and power of US client states around the world amid interlinked conflicts spanning Europe, West Asia, and building tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Adjacent conflicts are also taking place everywhere from Latin America to the continent of Africa as part of this process. 

The US “Burden Sharing Network” Takes Shape

September 15, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In 2025, the US National Security Strategy paper would be broadly misinterpreted as a US plan to break with its historical pursuit of global primacy and instead, retreat to the Western Hemisphere while somehow reconciling or coexisting with traditional targets of US aggression. 

Many analysts even claimed there was an absence of any direct mention of Russia or China as part of long-standing “great power competition.”  

Yet, even throughout the document itself, terms like “hostile and subversive influences” simply stood in for “Russia” and “China,” reaffirming continuity of US foreign policy objectives rather than upsetting or breaking from them. 

Included within the 33 page document was a detailed explanation of exactly how the United States would continue pursuing “great power competition” against not only Russia and China, but all other nations obstructing US primacy.

Under a section titled, “priorities,” was a policy of “burden-sharing and burden-shifting” which explicitly stated: 

“…the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus that undermined past efforts.” 

It should be noted that the introduction of a US “burden sharing network” describing the coercion of other nations into serving as extensions of US power and influence, followed a section titled “primacy of nations” claiming, “it is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty” - thus, a complete contradiction. 

But that is only if one assumes the US discussed the “primacy of nations” as a general principle applied to all nations and not just a means of absolving the US - and the US alone - of its obligations under international law. 

The threat of “economic tools” to “align incentives” and to “insist on reforms” for what the US paper claims is “long-term stability” are clearly euphemisms for the coercion of nations to serve US foreign policy objectives, and specifically to uphold US primacy even at the expense of these nations’ own objective best interests. 

The Burden Sharing Network in Practice 

One of the most blatant implementations of this “burden sharing network” was actually publicly announced months before the National Security Strategy paper was published. In February 2025, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would publicly demand Europe “double down and re-commit” to what he referred to as “Ukraine’s immediate security needs” and “Europe’s long-term defense and deterrence goals.” 

At a time when many in the public and analytical circles still believed the US under the new Trump administration was trying to either end or distance itself from the ongoing war in Ukraine - Secretary Hegseth made it clear that any shift in US policy toward Ukraine was merely - what he would call - a “division of labor” between US interests in Europe and the Pacific and realistic limitations preventing the US from pursuing both without extracting more resources from its client states.

How the US Destruction of the INF Treaty Backfired

August 29, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Western media headlines have announced the alleged use by Russia of what is being dubbed the “Iskander-1000,” a ground-launched ballistic missile with a potential range of approximately 1,000 km (Western sources claim previous Iskander missiles had ranges of around 390 km with the current Iskander-1000 having a range of 550 km and a potential future range of 1,000 km). Should the new Iskander variant achieve ranges of up to 1,000 km it would place all of Ukraine’s territory within reach from launch positions across pre-2022 Russian Federation territory.  

The Iskander’s range had previously been capped at 500 km by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. However, that cap was lifted following the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the treaty in 2019 under the first Trump administration. That had followed the likewise unilateral US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 under the Bush administration - all part of a continuous US policy of dismantling arms control treaties and rolling out treaty-violating weapons along the borders of not only Russia, but also Iran in West Asia and China in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Among those US treaty-violating systems were Aegis Ashore installations capable of tracking and intercepting missiles fired by Russia as part of a retaliatory strike - a key violation of the ABM treaty which would theoretically allow the US to carry out a nuclear or conventional first-strike on Russia while preventing or minimizing any Russian retaliation. The Aegis Ashore system is also capable of ground-launching INF treaty-prohibited Tomahawk cruise missiles (2,500 km) offensively. Aegis Ashore was constructed and brought online in Romania and Poland during the Obama and Biden administrations respectively. 

Also following the US withdrawal from the INF treaty was the development and deployment of the mobile Typhon system capable of ground-launching conventional or nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles previously prohibited under the INF treaty. The first Typhon systems became operational and plans to deploy it began under the subsequent Biden administration - demonstrating continuity of agenda regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the US government. 

In addition to the Aegis Ashore and Typhon systems, the US also began work on the Dark Eagle hypersonic ground-launched missile (3,500 km) - another system prohibited under the previous INF treaty. 

There is also the US Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) slated to replace aging and less capable ATAMCS fired by HIMARS and M-270 launchers. PrSM is the closest US-equivalent to the Iskander with PrSM’s current range at 500 km and plans to likewise extend it to 1,000 km in future variants. 

With US-Soviet/Russian treaties abandoned by the US and a growing number of weapon systems being openly developed and deployed by Washington - Russia began rolling out its own comparable systems. 

In addition to the Iskander-1000, Russia has already introduced the Iskander-K (500 km with some variants reaching up to 2,000 km) - a cruise missile launched by the same mobile platforms used to fire Iskander-M ballistic missiles. Ground-launched versions of Russia’s Kalibr cruise missiles (1,500 - 2,500 km) and its hypersonic Zircon missiles (1,000 km) have also been developed and since deployed. 

Most notable among Russia’s rollout of systems to counter US INF treaty-violating weapons is the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (3,000-5,500 km) capable of delivering up to 6 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) at hypersonic speeds - each of which contain an additional 6 submunitions for a total of 36 projectiles. Its destructive power has already been demonstrated amid the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

US INF Treaty Destruction Backfiring 

The US withdrawal from the INF treaty (and before that, the ABM treaty) was designed to give the US an advantage over not only Russia by further encircling it with treaty-violating anti-missile and offensive missile systems - but also over China which never signed any arms control treaties with the US. However, the emerging result is a lopsided quantitative and qualitative edge for both Russia and China - saying nothing of their combined capabilities.