Both China and Russia are trying to ‘replace the free and open order’ that the US enjoys, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said, adding that he wants the ‘lethality’ of the US military to increase
China’s fast-growing technological and military capabilities make it a greater threat to America than terrorism, the US Department of Defense has claimed in a new strategy report.
The document also says Russia is an equally prominent threat for the same reasons, and says that both countries seek “to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model”.
Confronting China and Russia and staying ahead of their quickly expanding military capabilities are the Pentagon’s “principal priorities” and will require “increased and sustained investment,” according to an 11-page unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, released Friday.
The two US rivals are actively seeking to “co-opt or replace the free and open order that has enabled global security and prosperity since World War II,” according to the report.
To counter that effort, America will “thwart their use of coercion and intimidation to advance their goals and harm US interests.”
The report, a summary of a more detailed classified document mandated by Congress, outlines Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s views on geopolitics and threats facing the US one year into President Donald Trump’s term.
On Russia, it reflects a US foreign policy team that never bought into their leader’s early enthusiasm for President Vladimir Putin.
“Great-power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security,” Mattis said in a speech outlining the plan Friday at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
He said “everything we do in the department must contribute to the lethality of our military” because “our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space and cyberspace – and it is continuing to erode.”
But the unclassified summary of the strategy offers few specifics of how US forces should be structured to combat that threat, how many conflicts those forces must be ready to contest – possibly simultaneously – or the budget assumptions driving the document.
The report singles out China’s military modernisation and expansion in the South China Sea as key threats to US power. It also highlights Russian actions to undermine democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s efforts to “shatter” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“China and Russia are now undermining the international order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles and ‘rules of the road,” according to the report.
