MADRID —
The challenges the United States sees from Russia and China are similar because both have studied the America way of war, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday.
Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford is here visiting Spanish officials after attending the NATO Military Committee meeting in Warsaw, Poland, over the weekend.
The bottom line for the United States and the country's greatest source of strength strategically “is the network of allies we've built up over 70 years,” Dunford told reporters traveling with him. At the operational level, he added, the U.S. military's advantage is the ability to deploy forces anywhere they are needed in a timely manner and then sustain them.
“Russia has studied us since 1990,” Dunford said. “They looked at us in 2003. They know how we project power.”
Russian leaders are trying to undermine the credibility of the U.S. ability to meet its alliance commitments and are seeking to erode the cohesion of the NATO alliance, he said.
Russia has devoted serious money to modernizing its military, the chairman noted, and that covers the gamut from its nuclear force to command and control to cyber capabilities. “At the operational level, their goal is to field capabilities that challenge our ability to project power into Europe and operate freely across all domains,”…
