WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - The United States Navy is re-establishing its Second Fleet, responsible for the northern Atlantic Ocean, nearly seven years after it was disbanded as the Pentagon puts countering Russia at the heart of its military strategy. Admiral John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations, explained the decision as part of recent U.S. strategic shifts, saying that “we’re back in an era of great power competition.” In its 2018 strategy plan, the Department of Defense stated, fairly remarkably, that “inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” The plan highlighted Russia’s increasing aggression, including a desire “to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” as a primary concern. Growing tensions with Russia have led NATO and its members to make a number of changes to their military posture on the ground in Europe, and now the US is reactivating its Second Fleet to oversee the northern Atlantic Ocean and US East Coast. The Second Fleet was deactivated in September 2011 after 65 years of service as part of a cost-saving and organizational-restructuring effort; many of its personnel and responsibilities were folded into US Fleet Forces Command. RELATED: West Point Found a Place Among Its Ranks for Fallen Parkland JROTC Cadet

However, when Defense Secretary James Mattis presented the nation’s new strategy, which sets the stage for all policy decisions, he said China and Russia were “revisionist powers” that “seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models.”

“The re-establishment of the US Second Fleet is part of a wider strategy of re-orientating the U.S. armed forces towards a world of renewed big power competition and away from the counter-insurgency campaigns they have been fighting over recent decades,” noted Jonathan Marcus, a defense and diplomatic correspondent for the BBC.
The United States Navy re-establishes the United States Second Fleet, which was disbanded in 2011, citing recent heightened tensions between NATO and Russia.