Defense Secretary Jim Mattis unveiled on Friday a strategy for sharpening the U.S. military’s competitive advantage against near-peer adversaries Russia and China by modernizing the force, strengthening alliances and building new partnerships all in an effort to preserve the relative global stability established after World War II.
“The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers,” the strategy reads. “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.”
Mattis released an unclassified summary of the classified National Defense Strategy (NDS) during a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Titled “Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge”, the strategy is the first new policy directive for the military in a decade and refocuses the Defense Department’s energies from combating terrorism to global power struggles, Mattis said.
“Great-power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national Security,” he said. “This strategy expands our competitive space, prioritizes preparedness for war, provides clear direction for significant change at the speed of relevance and builds a more lethal force to compete strategically.”
The strategy outlines a three-pronged approach to fielding a military with capabilities so dominant that neither China nor Russia would dare initiate a dust-up. First, the Pentagon will focus on increasing the lethality of the military services and the weapons and platforms they employ. The NDS is the military portion of the overarching National Security Strategy (NSS) published by the Trump administration in December.
“Our military is still strong, yet our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space and cyberspace – and it is continuing to erode,” Mattis said. “Rapid technological change, the negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the longest, continuing stretch of combat in our nation’s history and defense spending caps.”
The military also has been conducting two wars, among its other globally dispersed commitments, under continuing resolutions for nine of the past 10 years. That has resulted in an “overstretched and under-resourced” military, Mattis said.
“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,” Mattis said.
The strategy calls for boosting the military’s ability to fight across the “spectrum of conflict” from small counter-insurgency operations to high-end, great-power conflict. It prescribes modernizing nearly every aspect of the military, prioritizing investments to upgrade capabilities in space, cyberspace, the nuclear triad, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems and logistics.
“The nation must field sufficient, capable forces to deter conflict and if deterrence fails, we must win,” he said. “We will modernize key capabilities recognizing we cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment.”
Second, the Defense and State Departments will strengthen existing alliances – with an emphasis on NATO despite the Trump administration’s dissatisfaction with some members’ contributions – and seek out new partnerships with like-minded democratic nations.
“We are going to be stronger together in recognizing that our military will be designed and trained and ready to fight alongside allies,” Mattis said. “History proves that nations with allies thrive, an approach to security and prosperity that has served the United States well in keeping peace and winning war.”
Mattis did stipulate that allies should carry their “equitable share” of the cost of collective defense. President Donald Trump has harshly criticized NATO members in particular for failing to invest more in their own militaries, though nothing is directly owed the United States.
“We carried a disproportionate share of the defense burden for the democracies in the post-World War II era,” Mattis said. “The growing economic strength of today’s democracies and partners dictates they must now step up and do more. When together we pool our resources and share responsibility for the common defense, individual nations’ security burdens become lighter.”
Inside the Pentagon, Mattis plans to reform Defense Department business practices to field capabilities more quickly and affordably. The strategy calls for a transition to a “culture of performance” focused on developing, integrating and adapting new technologies and methods.
“In doing this, we will earn the trust of the American people and Congress that their defense dollars are well spent,” Mattis said. “We are going to have to be good stewards of the tax dollars allocated to us and that meets results and accountability matter.”
Fielding weapons quickly and affordably is the main goal of reforming the Pentagon’s acquisition arm. The strategy prioritizes speed of delivery, continuous adaptation and “frequent modular upgrades, Mattis said. Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan is leading the charge to overhaul both the management and business practices of the Defense Department.
“We must shed outdated management and acquisition practices while adopting American industry’s best practices,” he said. “Our management structure and processes are not engraved in stone. … If the current structures inhibit our pursuit of lethality, I expect the service secretaries and agency heads to consolidate, eliminate or restructure to achieve the mission.”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) praised the strategy in statement that also calls on Congress to fully fund the plan.
“This National Defense Strategy is a serious and important blueprint that recognizes the complex array of threats we face, both the known and unknown, across traditional and new domains of warfare,” Thornberry said. “Congress now has important work ahead of us to fully fund this strategy, giving our troops the equipment, training, and personnel they need to execute it. If Congress does not come together to find a way to fund this strategy, Secretary Mattis must explicitly inform Congress and the American people of the consequences of that failure. What is unacceptable under all circumstances is to continue to ask our troops to do more with less and turn a blind eye to the deadly consequences of a steadily-eroding force.”
Chronic and continual budget uncertainty forms an unreliable foundation for the strategy, Mattis said. Without stable, predictable funding, the military will continue to struggle to modernize and meet its obligations, he said.
“We recognize no strategy can long survive without necessary funding and the stable, predictable budgets required to defend America in the modern age,” Mattis said. “Failure to modernize our military risks leaving us with a force that can dominate the last war but be irrelevant to tomorrow’s security.”
“As hard as the last 16 years have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military of the combined impact of the Budget Control Act defense spending cuts worsened by us operating in nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayer dollars,” Mattis said.