WASHINGTON – The new US National Defense Strategy targets Russia and Chinaaccording to Defense Secretary James Mattis, but it is based on the falseassumption that those nations have such capabilities, former CIA caseofficer Philip Giraldi told Sputnik.
Mattis said the US was facing growing threats from different revisionistpowers, including Russia and China. He claimed that Moscow aimed to shatterNATO, change European and Middle East security in its favor, while Chinawas using “predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors.
However, Giraldi, who was also a former US Army intelligence officer, saidthere was no evidence to support the National Defense Strategy’s threatassessment.
“There is zero evidence that Russia and China actually threaten the UnitedStates or are even thinking that way,” he said on Friday.
[image: U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis gestures during a pressbriefing on the campaign to defeat ISIS at the Pentagon in Washington,U.S., May 19, 2017]The strategy was misguided and failed to recognize that arming for warincreased the likelihood that it could break out through fear ormiscalculation, Giraldi warned.
“If you actively prepare for war, you will probably wind up having onethrough miscalculation or mischance, or just because you have all thosenice weapons lying around,” he said.
In addition, the US strategic reliance on huge alliances to invade andrestructure other nations had also proved a failure, Giraldi pointed out.
“Coalitions have been tried in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria but they havenot worked because there is no overall strategy to improve the situationsin those places, to define victory and to know when it is time to exit,” hesaid.
The new doctrine was also alarming in its increased readiness to usenuclear weapons, Giraldi cautioned.
“The most scary thing [about the document] is the acknowledgement that theUS is prepared to use nuclear weapons in situations where the other side isnot nuclear armed,” he said.
[image: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks regarding theAdministration’s National Security Strategy at the Ronald Reagan Buildingand International Trade Center in Washington D.C., U.S. December 18, 2017]Plans to use US nuclear weapons against other nations that did not havethem went back at least 15 years to the George W. Bush administration,Giraldi recalled.
“This goes back to [then-Vice President] Dick Cheney in 2003 when it wasmooted that a war with Iran might be in the offing and the Pentagon drewup a plan to use nukes on the Iranians if they resisted too hard and didn’tsurrender expeditiously,” he said.
The new document was fundamentally misnamed as it was a blueprint for USaggression rather than a plan to defend the country, Giraldi concluded.
“Excuse me, but you have a National Defense Strategy to protect the countryfrom attack, not to intimidate competitors,” he said.
Philip Giraldi is executive director of the Council for the NationalInterest, a group that advocates more even-handed US government policiesin the Middle East.