Nukes Won’t Buy Russian Prosperity: VICE News Interviews Pentagon Chief Ashton Carter

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter inherited a raft of tough strategic defense challenges when he took over as Pentagon chief after his predecessor Chuck Hagel resigned with a nudge from President Barack Obama — with an aggressive Russia prominent among them.

Obama nominated Carter to be his chief military adviser in December, 2014, nine months after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine and amid heavy fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces in the country's east. In the three months since Carter took office in February, the US-Russian relationship remains frayed, with Russia threatening to destabilize European security and order for the first time since the Cold War ended.

In an exclusive interview with VICE founder Shane Smith, Carter said that the game of chicken Russia is playing with Ukraine and the West brings to mind the bad old days when nuclear proliferation and military tensions between the US and Russia were at their peak.

"This is a throwback — to conduct activities that intimidate allies of the United States, to rattle nuclear sabers that haven't been rattled in a quarter century," he remarked, describing Russia's large nuclear arsenal as "very dangerous" for regional stability.

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Carter suggested that rather than engaging in heightened military posturing, Russia should instead focus on improving its economy, which has been weakened by Western sanctions over the past year. The ruble dropped to record lows amid fears of an impending recession late last year, sparking a panic among Russian shoppers.

Russia's leaders have "plenty of problems to solve economically, and plenty of opportunities if they want to turn the corner and not go backwards, but go forward," Carter said. "Right now they're walking backwards, and that's obviously not good for us, but it's not going to be good for them either."

Russia's nuclear arsenal won't "buy prosperity," he noted. Such weapons are "not going to buy progress, they're not going to buy what people want in life. They're not going to get them with nuclear weapons, and that's as true as it was back in the Cold War."

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Carter also discussed the cybersecurity breach on the Pentagon's computer system that occurred earlier this year and originated from Russia, saying that "all of its motivations are not clear."

"They did get into a DOD [Department of Defense] network for a brief time, were detected, expelled," he told Smith. "This can't be good, right? For anybody to be inside of our networks, whatever their motivation."

Carter announced the purported Russian hack during a speech at Stanford University in April, as part of broader discussions on the importance of securing cyber networks and on the Pentagon's new and improved emphasis on technological security.

When asked to rank cybersecurity among his defense priorities, Carter replied that the issue is "pretty high up there" in importance because it cuts through all levels of warfare.

"From traditional state-to-state conflict down to these shadow wars that we have in today's world, cyber pervades all that," he said, "and we've got to be good at it if we're going to protect people across that whole spectrum."

Parts 2-4 of VICE's interview with Ashton Carter are coming soon.

Follow Liz Fields on Twitter: @lianzifields