America’s new national security strategy announced by US Defense Secretary James Mattis is a veiled reference to funding the US military–industrial complex and expanding Washington’s hegemony around the world, says a political analyst in Virginia.

In a speech on Friday at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Mattis also warned of “growing threats” from Russia and China, saying the US military’s advantages over the two countries have eroded in recent years.

The assessment is part of an unclassified summary of the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.

“The United States has the largest military–industrial complex in world history; there’s never been a nation in the history of the world spend as much money on military-related production as the United States,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“The military budget of the United States is approximately the same as the next 25 largest militaries anywhere in the world,” Preston told Press TV in a phone interview on Monday.

“In addition to the fact that the massive military budget that the United States has is largely a welfare program for these private military production companies; we also see the ongoing efforts of the United States to expand American hegemony and essentially creating a type of American world empire,” he added.

In his assessment, the Pentagon chief said that the US’ so-called campaign against terrorists will continue, but the “great power competition” is now the primary focus of US national security.

His remarks come as US President Donald Trump and his administration are concerned that the US military is being affected by years of budget shortfalls and waste.

In December 2017, Trump unveiled a new “America First” national security strategy that named China and Russia as “competition,” claiming that the two countries sought to “challenge American power, influence, and interests.”

A recent report by the US think tank RAND Corporation warned that the United States would likely lose a simultaneous military confrontation with Russia and China.

Thanks to their major technology advancements over the past years, Beijing and Moscow have now reached a level that they can top Washington in certain areas of military prowess, the report said, warning that limited budget and a lack of enough forces to support the “ambitious” US military plan were hindering American forces.