Pentagon General Inspector’s Office has released a report on the Office’s tasks for fiscal year 2020. Among them, the first place in the document is given to “countering” China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Experts note that such guidelines are a direct reflection of the current U.S. national security strategy.
According to analysts, the Pentagon is still concerned about Russia’s superiority in the sphere of hypersonic weapons, and the accusations against Moscow of “spreading influence” are nothing but a projection of Washington’s traditional methods on its geopolitical opponents.
“In order to achieve its goals, Russia relies on strategic weapons systems as one of the key elements of its national security strategy, as well as selective modernization of conventional armed forces”, – the document says.
Against this background, it is worth noting that Russian doctrine of the use of strategic forces is exclusively defensive in nature, while the U.S. in 2018 adopted a new nuclear doctrine, in which Washington reserves the right to launch a preventive nuclear strike.
Recently, Vladimir Putin said that Russia intends to continue building up its defense capabilities and put on alert the system of hypersonic, laser and other weapons, which are currently not available in other countries. At the same time, the Head of state stressed that for the Russian side this is “no reason to threaten anyone”.
“On the contrary, we are ready to do everything in our power to push the disarmament process, taking into account our latest weapon systems, whose task is solely to guarantee security in view of the growing threats to us”, – Putin said.
“America is well aware that Russian weapons today are of better quality and the weapons development vector it has chosen is more right. At some point, the USA began to invest into a fifth-generation fighter, on which billions of dollars were spent, while Russia took a different path, which turned out to be more strategic and less costly, respectively, it has an advantage in this area”, – the expert said.
The report of the General Inspector’s the Office of Pentagon also states that, in addition to the modernization of strategic and conventional forces, Russia conducts extensive activities related to the so-called gray zone of influence.
“This includes cyber operations, social media misinformation campaigns for civilians, and the use of puppet mercenaries to achieve their goals, while keeping overall defense spending under control”, – the document says.
The expert Vladimir Batyuk believes that in this section of the report, the Pentagon simply projects on Russia the mechanisms that the US side itself has used for many years.