Great power competition is back, and its emphasis in the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy is a recognition of something “we should have recognized 10 years ago,” the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast today.
Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva said the strategies recognize that competition among the United States, Russia
“We have spent the last 10 years observing a world where China is ascendant and Russia is accumulating wealth and influence across the Asian and European continents,” he said. “And the United States is engaged with both.”
If there were no conflict or friction points among the nations, then it would be “just normal commerce,” Selva said. But that is not the case, he added. Russia took two provinces from the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. It illegally annexed Ukraine in 2014 and continues to support insurgents in the eastern part of the country. Russia supports the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
China is building artificial islands in the South China Sea and proclaiming extraterritorial claims, Selva said. The Chinese also are investing heavily in defense capabilities and not being transparent, he added.
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“There have been and there remain friction points between Russia, China
The National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy have explained what should have been obvious, the general told the group. “Our relationship has to be defined by the way we are conducting ourselves, not the way we wish we would conduct ourselves,” he said.
China, Russia
The great power competition will last years and will be fundamental in how national security policy and foreign policy are debated and formed for decades to come, Selva said.
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