Washington - US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work has said that the United States and its allies must find means to respond the military actions of Russia and China.
He said that all sides should continue to talk and engage diplomatically, however underscoring that Washington is ‘always hedging against the fact that we might have to respond militarily to… certainly any engagement against our allies’.
During a Sept. 30 address at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, Work said that the United States has to find a way for Moscow and Beijing to feel secure.
‘They [Russia and China] clearly are staking out their position in their ‘near abroads.’ And this is one of the things that we’re going to have to work out over the course of the next several years on what they consider to be areas of their vital interest, and what we have to do is find a means by which to make sure that those desires do not resort to the use of force and would require an overt response militarily from us. We have to work these out and make sure that Russia and China feel secure in their near abroads.’
