 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Joe Biden, a sophisticated imperialist. U.S. President Joe Biden has completed his first year in power. A large number of reviews have been done on the occasion of his term so far. Most of these reviews have tried to find what has changed since Biden took over from his predecessor Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the conclusion is not much. While Biden does lack Donald Trump's infamous hyperbole on most things, but apart from that, the work of the two administrations has been pretty similar so far. The U.S. defense budget is the most telling example of this. In December, the U.S. Senate passed a defense budget of $768 billion. It was roughly $24 billion more than what the Biden administration had demanded. This year's defense budget is $38 billion higher than the last defense budget passed under the supposed warmongering Donald Trump administration. The increase in the defense budget comes at a time when there has been no progress on emergency social aid programs through the Build Back Better Bill. The bill was rejected by the Senate within days of passing the increased defense budget. The Build Back Better Bill was envisaged after nearly two years of the pandemic, which battered the U.S. economy and worsened economic disparity in the country. The increase in the defense bill also exposes the growing control of the war lobby in the U.S. The so-called war against terror and whatever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq no longer enjoy mass support in the U.S. Now, in order to justify the increase in war expenditure, newer threats are being invented. All this at a time of prolonged economic crisis. Who is the largest beneficiary of this increased government expenditure on war? It is becoming increasingly apparent that the answer is the war industry. The war industry broadly refers to a combination of forces such as private weapon manufacturers, the Pentagon and a set of hawks in academia and administration. According to Brown University's cost of war project, the Pentagon has spent around $14 million since the beginning of the so-called war on terror in 2001. Nearly half of this went to private defense contractors in the U.S. The increase in the defense budget was made despite anti-war groups and a section of democratic Congress persons openly opposing such moves. Groups such as Cote Ping and Senator Bernie Sanders who supported Biden's bid for presidency due to his anti-war campaign pitch have been leading a movement to cut the Pentagon and use the money for social sector spending. The supposed rising threat of China was the justification for fresh increases. China-centric fear among the U.S. was taken to new heights under Donald Trump's administration. He started the so-called trade war banning Chinese companies on flimsy excuses and imposing unsanctioned tariffs on goods and services imported from China. He also spread claims about COVID-19 originating from China which had no scientific basis, misinformation about supposed persecution of Uighurs and rumors about China's growing military assertions in the South China Sea which the U.S. has been stating, supposedly endangers freedom of navigation. During his presidential campaign, Biden had been critical about Trump's approach towards China. However, ever since assuming the presidency last year, Biden has pursued Trump's approach towards China in a much more aggressive tone, so much so that he has risked U.S. relationships with some close European allies such as France. Apart from reduction in the hype rhetoric, Biden's approach towards the Iran nuclear deal, towards war in Yemen, towards the presence of troops in Iraq and Syria, and towards Cuba and other Latin American countries such as Venezuela, have remained the same as Donald Trump. The ongoing standoff in Eastern Europe over Ukraine is yet another example of how the priority of the Biden administration remains its imperial agenda and the interests of the U.S. war industry, not the interests of the common Americans struggling to survive the pandemic and rising economic problems.