New US defense strategy downgrades Russian ‘threat’

The Pentagon has downgraded the alleged threat level from Russia in its newly released US National Defense Strategy.

A similar document issued under the previous administration of President Joe Biden in October 2022, less than a year after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, described Moscow as an “acute threat.”

But the updated defense strategy, published by the War Department on Friday, referred to Russia as “a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.”

The document also stressed that Moscow “possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the US Homeland.”

It said the fighting between Moscow and Kiev has proven that Russia “retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power,” as well as “national resolve required to sustain a protracted war in its near abroad.”

However, according to the Pentagon’s assessment, Moscow is “in no position to make a bid for European hegemony. European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power.”

The document said that the US will “continue to play a vital role in NATO” and “remain engaged in Europe,” but from now on it will “prioritize defending the US Homeland and deterring China,” echoing the White House National Security Strategy published in October.

Despite Europe having “a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power,” NATO members on the continent are “strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, with critical but more limited US support,” according to the strategy.

The EU and UK should also be “taking the lead in supporting Ukraine’s defense,” the Pentagon stressed. It also reiterated the stance of US President Donald Trump that the conflict between Moscow and Kiev “must end.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin opined last October that the Trump administration is guided by American interests, which he called a “rational approach.”

“Russia also reserves the right to be guided by our national interests. One of which, incidentally, is the restoration of full-fledged relations with the United States,” he stressed.