Pentagon chief seeks ‘new vision’ for US defence in face of emerging cyber and space threats
- Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin did not mention China or North Korea but said the next war the US fights will look very different from previous ones
- He emphasised the Biden administration’s promise to put diplomacy first with the military maintaining deterrence
“US military isn’t meant to stand apart, but to buttress US diplomacy and advance a foreign policy that employs all of our instruments of national power,” Austin said.
He chose to spell out his ideas at Pearl Harbour, at the centre of US military power in the Indo-Pacific region, reflecting US concerns that China’s rapid modernisation and growing assertiveness make it a powerful adversary. Notably, Austin in his speech did not explicitly mention China or North Korea.
In his first four-plus months as defence secretary, Austin has focused less on big policy pronouncements and more on immediate issues like the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and internal issues like extremism in the military, as well as launching broad reviews of defence strategy.
Speaking with the USS Arizona Memorial and the Battleship Missouri Memorial in the background, Austin cautioned that the US military cannot be satisfied with believing it is the strongest and most capability military in the world today – “not at a time when our potential adversaries are very deliberately working to blunt our edge”.