Detailing the Trump administration’s new national defence strategy, which the Financial Times revealed this week, Mr Mattis called for bipartisan backing to lift defence spending caps imposed by a Congress so divided it has come to the brink of a government shutdown.
“Great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of US national security,” said Mr Mattis, who warned against the rise of authoritarianism. “Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare — air, land, sea, space, and cyber space — and it is continuing to erode.”
Mr Mattis said rapid technological change and America’s long-running wars have diminished US military capabilities. The military was coping with “inadequate and misaligned resources”, he said, as he called for new investment in space, cyber space, missile defence and nuclear deterrence forces.
President Donald Trump has pledged to initiate a large-scale military build-up. “We’re going to have a military like we’ve never had before because we . . . just about never needed our military more than now,” he said on Thursday, adding it needed to be the best in the world “by far”.
