New Pentagon strategy takes aim at Russia, China

TheUS military has put countering China and Russia at the heart of a newnational defence strategy unveiled yesterday, the latest sign ofshifting American priorities after more than a decade-and-a-half offocusing on the fight against Islamist militants.The strategydocument, the first of its kind since at least 2014, sets priorities forthe US defence department that are expected to be reflected in futuredefence spending requests.The Pentagon released an unclassified, 11-page version of the document yesterday.Theso-called “National Defence Strategy” represents the latest sign ofhardening resolve by President Donald Trump’s administration to addresschallenges from Russia and China, despite Trump’s calls for improvedties with Moscow and Beijing.“We face growing threats fromrevisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seekto create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,” DefenceSecretary Jim Mattis said in a speech presenting the document.ElbridgeColby, deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and forcedevelopment, said at a briefing with reporters that Russia was far morebrazen than China in its use of military power.Russia annexedUkraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and intervened militarily in Syriato support its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.Still, Moscowwas limited by its economic resources, Colby said. China, on the otherhand, was described as economically and militarily ascendant by thedocument.It has embarked on far-reaching military modernisation that Colby said was in “deep contravention to our interests.”“Thisstrategy really represents a fundamental shift to say, look, we have toget back, in a sense, to the basics of the potential for war and thisstrategy says the focus will be on prioritising preparedness for war, inparticular major power war,” he added.The document also listedNorth Korea among the Pentagon’s top priorities, citing the need tofocus US missile defences against the threat from Pyongyang, whichbeyond its nuclear weapons has also amassed an arsenal of biological,chemical, and conventional arms.It said that while state actors would have to be countered, non-state actors like militants would continue to pose a threat.The document said that international alliances would be critical for the US military, by far the world’s best-resourced.Butit also stressed a need for burden-sharing, an apparent nod to Trump’spublic criticism of allies who he says unfairly take advantage of USsecurity guarantees.Mattissaid that the US military’s competitive edge has eroded “in everydomain of warfare” and blamed that partly on spending caps andcongressional budget dysfunction.“As hard as the last 16 years ofwar have been, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readinessof the US military than the combined impact” of the caps and short-termfunding.In sheer spending terms, the US’ military outlay per yearis still far more than China and Russia, the rivals cited by Mattis. TheUS is spending $587.8bn per year on its military, China $161.7bn andRussia $44.6bn.