Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday endorsed the Pentagon’s European Reassurance Initiative.“If we don’t have the funding to maintain (ERI), then, frankly, the reassurance goes away,” Mattis told the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Wednesday. “As if we’re denying a reality that has been pretty revealed to us over the last several years.” In response to Russian “adventurism,” as Mattis described it, the Defense Department requested $3.4 billion for ERI in fiscal year 2017, a nearly four-fold increase from FY ’16.…
