Russia is an 'acute threat' but China is the biggest challenge for the Pentagon

Europe 1 with AFP 7:27 p.m., October 27, 2022

China poses a "fundamental" security risk to the United States for decades to come, while Russia poses an "acute threat," the Pentagon said in its new defense strategy released Thursday.

China "presents the most fundamental and systemic challenge, while Russia poses an acute threat to US national interests abroad and at home," the US Department of Defense said in a statement. document which fixes the strategy of the American army for the years to come.

"Increasingly aggressive Chinese coercive efforts"

"The deepest and most serious danger to the national security of the United States is China's coercive and increasingly aggressive efforts to reshape the Indo-Pacific region and the international system in accordance with its interests and authoritarian preferences", according to this new defense strategy published for the first time in concert with the new nuclear strategy of the United States.

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"China's increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activities against Taiwan are destabilizing, risk causing misunderstandings, and threaten peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," it said. this document of about twenty pages, of which a longer version classified as defense secret was sent to Congress several months ago.

"The nuclear danger persists and could worsen" with the war in Ukraine

The new American strategy "seeks to prevent China's domination of key regions while protecting American territory and strengthening a stable and open international system", adds the Pentagon, which specifies however that "a conflict with China does not is neither inevitable nor desirable".

The nuclear weapon intended to deter "any form of strategic attack"

The United States considers that its nuclear weapons are intended to "deter any form of strategic attack", including conventional, warned the Pentagon in its new nuclear strategy published Thursday.

"This includes the use of a nuclear weapon, regardless of its power, and this includes very significant attacks of a strategic nature with the use of non-nuclear means," a senior US ministry official told reporters. Defense, explaining that this new approach is intended to "complicate the decision-making" of the adversary.

Russia for its part poses an "acute" risk that was "demonstrated most recently by the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine", according to the document.

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine underscores that the nuclear danger persists and could worsen, in an increasingly competitive and unstable geopolitical context."