The United States’ top diplomat calls for a greatly expanded budget for activities in the Indo-Pacific to counter communist China’s increasing aggression and fortify American ties in the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a March 22 Senate appropriations hearing that the Biden administration is seeking an 18 percent increase to the State Department’s Indo-Pacific budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
The funds are necessary to increase the United States’ competitive edge, Blinken said, because the world is entering an era of competing visions that will reshape the character of the international order.
“We are meeting at an inflection point,” Blinken said. “The post-Cold War world is over, and there is an intense competition underway to shape, to determine what comes next….