The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, which Defense Secretary James Mattis presented on January 19, envisages aggressive measures to counter Russia and China and instructs the military to refocus on Cold War-style competition with them, away from terrorist threats and “rogue nations.”  This is in stark contrast to Barack Obama’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, which called for “preserving strategic stability” in relations with the two Eurasian giants.  The new defense strategy openly treats them as the Pentagon’s “principal priorities.”  According to Mattis, “great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

The unclassified 11-page summary indicates a major victory for foreign-policy hawks and for the military-industrial complex.  It marks the final defeat of candidate Donald Trump’s intention, repeatedly stated in the summer of 2016, to abandon the bipartisan quest for global primacy, to reexamine the purpose and utility of NATO, and to improve relations with Russia.  It reflects the National Security Strategy (NSS) unveiled in December 2017, which asserted that “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”  It calls for comprehensive modernization of the offensive nuclear arsenal, deploying more missile defense systems at home and abroad, and building up stockpiles of battlefield weapons in strategic locations around the world.  A longer classified version was submitted to Congress, including the demand for a massive increase in military spending.

“Russia seeks veto authority over nations on its periphery,” the strategy says, and through economic and diplomatic means Moscow is seeking to undermine the North Atlantic Alliance.  The document fails to mention that the countries on Russia’s periphery have seen a sustained effort by the United States and some of her European allies to alter the geopolitical balance—most blatantly in Ukraine—and to continue NATO’s eastward expansion.  Particularly noteworthy is the accusation that Russia seeks to “change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor,” which is but one way of saying that Russia is conducting a foreign policy.  Every sovereign state in its relations with other countries seeks to influence “security and economic structures in its favor.”  Perhaps inadvertently, the document thus admits that a foreign power’s conduct of diplomacy not consistent with the acceptance of American hegemony is ipso facto seen as a threat to the security of the United States.

The “threat” exists because the doctrine reintroduces all key hubristic objectives of the George W. Bush era.  The U.S. must remain “the preeminent military power in the world,” the global balance of power must remain in America’s favor, and the Department of Defense should maintain and advance “an international order that is most conducive to our security and prosperity.”  This set of objectives, divorced from any conventional understanding of political, economic, or security interests, is to be financed by a massive increase in military spending (which already exceeds that of the next eight countries combined, being three times greater than China’s and eight times that of Russia).

Outspending the rest of the world was not enough: While the Chinese and Russian militaries have forged ahead, according to the National Defense Strategy, the United States is “emerging from a period of strategic atrophy,” having lost major advantages she had long maintained in the air, on the land, in space, and in the nuclear arena.  The failure to increase military spending will result “in decreasing U.S. global influence, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, and reduced access to markets that will contribute to a decline in our prosperity and standard of living.”  In the meantime, China “is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their [sic] advantage.”  The use of the term Indo-Pacific region is indicative of the new geopolitical map that has developed in Washington over the past year, which sees Japan and India as the northeastern and southwestern pillars of an American-led mechanism aimed at containing China.  The claim that China is seeking to reorder that entire region to her advantage coincides with the comprehensive effort of Trump’s national-security team to enhance U.S. military capabilities and influence on both sides of the straits of Malacca.

The Chinese military modernization program, the document goes on, is designed to achieve “regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.”  This turn of phrase is indicative of the belief in Washington that the global order can be based solely on the preeminence of one power, rather than a multipolar system, and that the United States must be that power forever.  That is an irrational objective, which will only continue producing what the National Defense Strategy calls “increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order.”

Of particular concern is the document’s commitment to upgrading all aspects of America’s nuclear war-fighting apparatus, including “developing options to counter competitors’ coercive strategies, predicated on the threatened use of nuclear or strategic non-nuclear attacks.”  Translated into plain English, this means that the U.S. should be prepared to use nuclear weapons even in response to the perceived danger of conventional or cyberattack.  Alarmingly, the new doctrine has moved the focus from preventing a nuclear war to winning one.  Deterrence is no longer seen as a means of maintaining national security, but merely as a set of routine activities in the course of preparing for war.

The main problem with the 2018 National Defense Strategy is that it fails to define rational objectives and to balance ends and means accordingly.  It ignores the reality that America—whose share of the world economy has declined from 40 percent in 1960 to just over 20 percent today—cannot impose her hegemonistic writ on both Russia and China, while simultaneously preparing to fight North Korea and Iran, and maintaining close to 300,000 military personnel in 150 countries.

The Pentagon strategy pretends otherwise.  It has revamped the quest for full-spectrum dominance, not because the objective is rationally justifiable or financially sustainable, and not because China or Russia (let alone Iran) threatens America.  The reality is that the massive U.S. military machine and its suppliers need to justify their existence, and to convince the American people (as per Mattis) that further sacrifices are essential “to fund our military.”  The result is a blueprint for continued disaster, contrary to reason and to the American interest.