The 2018 National Defense Strategy lays the groundwork for a new Cold War, pitting the U.S. against Russia, China and other “revisionist powers” and “rogue states,” explains Eric Zuesse.

By Eric Zuesse

On January 20th, CBS News’ top story was headlined “Terrorism no longer the military’s top priority, Mattis says” and read: “Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis’ top priority.”

The Trump Administration had issued a crucial document on how it will implement America’s national defense two days earlier. This document, the National Defense Strategy 2018 (NDS18), continues the hostility toward Russia that has characterized U.S. foreign policy since Barack Obama’s second term, but added to the U.S.’s global belligerence by tacking on some hostility toward China for good measure.

The NDS follows up on the National Security Strategy 2018 (NSS18) issued by Trump in December 2017, but, in keeping with his prior commitment to leaving to the generals the implementation of his national security policy, the Pentagon has now issued the NDS, which is signed only by Trump’s Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis. It offers considerably more information on what the practical meaning of the earlier NSS may be.

Ultimately, the meaning appears to be that the U.S. is ratcheting up tensions with nuclear-armed powers and that “radical Islamic terrorism” is replaced by Russia and China as the U.S.’s top security concern. Despite the fact that on the campaign trail, Trump’s talk had focused on “radical Islamic terrorists,” castigating Democrats for not using this term, this appears now to be little more than bumper-sticker posturing to win votes.

In a continuation of Obama’s National Security Strategy 2015, which had accused Russia 18 times of “aggression,” Trump’s NDS18 effectively declares economic war against Russia (as if economic policy was within General Mattis’s portfolio). But the NDS18 goes even further to now include China as also being America’s enemy.

The NDS18 thus officially restores central principles of the Cold War — which was defined as an ideological struggle against communism — and intensifies hostilities against Russia, even now, decades after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism had supposedly ended this ideological struggle.

Trump’s new document, delivered by Mattis, says that non-state terrorism is no longer the biggest threat to America’s security. Instead China and Russia, identified in the NDS18 as “authoritarian” nations, pose the biggest threat.

A Return to Great Power Competition

In Secretary Mattis’s speech, on January 19th, introducing NDS18, he noted that while the U.S. will continue the campaign against terrorists that it is engaged in today, “Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

The document asserts: “It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.”

It warns of “the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition” by so-called “revisionist powers.” Claiming that China and Russia seek to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model, the NDS insists that the two countries are wielding “veto authority” over other countries’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.

“China is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage,” the document states. “As China continues its economic and military ascendance, asserting power through an all-of-nation long-term strategy, it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.”

For its part, “Russia seeks veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor,” the NDS states. It further warns that Moscow is using “emerging technologies” to subvert democratic processes in Georgia and Ukraine, claiming that Russia is expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal, which poses a “clear challenge” to security.

It then says, “Rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are destabilizing regions through their pursuit of nuclear weapons or sponsorship of terrorism.” So, to sum up, these four countries — China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran — are now the top targets for the U.S. military to defeat.

NDS18’s Stunning Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of NDS18 is hard to miss. For instance, it bemoans China’s and Russia’s “veto authority” over other nations while failing to acknowledge that the U.S. famously wields its veto power at the UN Security Council and in other venues — both formally and informally — to get its way on any number of issues, including blocking recognition of Palestine or international action on climate change.

The NDS18 also states that “both revisionist powers and rogue regimes are competing across all dimensions of power,” yet fails to recognize the United States’ own role within this cross-dimensional competition.

Rogue regimes “have increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principles of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals,” the document states, dutifully pretending that the United States doesn’t do these things as well.

Right now, the U.S. is militarily occupying, as an uninvited invading power, the sovereign nation of Syria, whose leader Bashar al-Assad won elections with 89% of the vote throughout the country. Even independent Western-sponsored polling in Syria has repeatedly shown that Assad would easily win any national election in his country, and that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. government (not Assad) for having brought the tens of thousands of jihadists into their country and caused the Syrian war that destroyed the nation.

On October 31, 2015, U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon twice criticized U.S. President Barack Obama’s refusal to allow the Syrian people to determine whom their President would be. Ban said, “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people,” but the U.S. government ignored him. President Trump’s defense secretary now says that the way to defeat countries that are “violating principles of sovereignty” is to continue occupying countries that never invited them in.

More Lethal Force

Under the heading “Build a More Lethal Force,” the NDS18 document states, “The surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one.” To do this, it will rely on “the Joint Force” (which the document fails to define) in this way:

“Prioritize preparedness for war. Achieving peace through strength requires the Joint Force to deter conflict through preparedness for war. During normal day-to-day operations, the Joint Force will sustainably compete to: deter aggression in three key regions — the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East; degrade terrorist and WMD threats; and defend U.S. interests from challenges below the level of armed conflict. In wartime, the fully mobilized Joint Force will be capable of: defeating aggression by a major power; deterring opportunistic aggression elsewhere; and disrupting imminent terrorist and WMD threats. During peace or in war, the Joint Force will deter nuclear and non-nuclear strategic attacks and defend the homeland. To support these missions, the Joint Force must gain and maintain information superiority; and develop, strengthen, and sustain U.S. security relationships.”

In a section titled “Strengthen Alliances and Attract New Partners,” the document says, “By working together with allies and partners we amass the greatest possible strength for the long-term advancement of our interests, maintaining favorable balances of power that deter aggression and support the stability that generates economic growth.” This includes “Fortify the Trans-Atlantic NATO Alliance” but is global.

Echoes of Obama — and Hitler

This document actually embodies, and in some ways extends and amplifies, U.S. President Barack Obama’s May 28, 2014 statement to America’s graduating class at the West Point Military Academy:

“The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.”

Put differently, to Obama, any nation other than the U.S. — even America’s allies — are “dispensable”; only the U.S. is not. Adolph Hitler’s version was “Deutschland über alles,” and, like America’s version, it comes from the accepted popular culture, not from the imperialist’s own overheated imagination.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans respect the military above all other institutions, including those that are supposedly democratically elected. This is reminiscent of German attitudes toward the end of the Weimar Republic, paving the way for Hitler, and closely reflects Trump’s own views.

While some skepticism in American institutions such as Congress is certainly warranted, as reflected in the recent Gallup poll, the overwhelming support for unelected bodies such as the U.S. military could reveal growing authoritarian trend in the United States. Yet, in the NDS18, it is China and Russia who are admonished for their authoritarian tendencies.

“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from each other, nations that do seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models, pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions,” Mattis said in his Jan. 19 speech.

Adversaries are the “revisionist powers” and “rogue regimes” while “our” side is unequivocally good, according to this view. At the same time, Mattis is not shy about claiming that it may be necessary to kill the other side. “It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for,” he said.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this approach could pave the way for a world war that would leave the planet in ruins.

A version of this article originally appeared at strategic-culture.org.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.