{"id":30243,"date":"2018-01-27T09:59:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-27T14:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30243"},"modified":"2018-01-27T10:00:10","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T15:00:10","slug":"americas-national-defense-is-really-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30243","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s National Defense Is Really Offense"},"content":{"rendered":"<header><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive\" title=\"America\u2019s National Defense Is Really Offense\" src=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/images\/news\/2018\/01\/26\/or-40235.jpg\" alt=\"America\u2019s National Defense Is Really Offense\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2018\/01\/26\/america-national-defense-really-offense.html\">America\u2019s National Defense Is Really Offense<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<p>On Friday, the Pentagon released an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/Portals\/1\/Documents\/pubs\/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-cke-saved-href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/Portals\/1\/Documents\/pubs\/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf\">unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy report<\/a>. On the same day, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered prepared remarks relating to the document.<\/p>\n<p>Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual defense of the realm and relates much more to offensive military action that might be employed to further certain debatable national interests. Occasionally, it is actually delusional, as when it refers to consolidating \u201cgains we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At times Mattis\u2019 supplementary \u201cremarks\u201d were more bombastic than reassuring, as when he warned \u201c\u2026those who would threaten America\u2019s experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day.\u201d He did not exactly go into what the military response to hacking a politician\u2019s emails might be and one can only speculate, which is precisely the problem.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most bizarre aspects of the report is its breathtaking assumption that \u201ccompetitors\u201d should be subjected to a potential military response if it is determined that they are in conflict with the strategic goals of the U.S. government. It is far removed from the old-fashioned Constitutional concept that one has armed forces to defend the country against an actual threat involving an attack by hostile forces and instead embraces preventive war, which is clearly an excuse for serial interventions overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the remarks by Mattis relate to China and Russia. \u00a0He said that \u201cWe face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models &#8211; pursuing veto authority over other nations\u2019 economic, diplomatic and security decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America\u2019s National Defense Is Really Offense On Friday, the Pentagon released an\u00a0unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy report. On the same day, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered prepared remarks relating to the document. Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[130,18173,14836,620,17108,694,8203,827,843,844],"class_list":["post-30243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-defense-vs-offence","tag-james-mattis","tag-pentagon","tag-philip-m-giraldi","tag-russia","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states","tag-us-government","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30244,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions\/30244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}