A former White House official says the United States cannot stand independent countries, such as Russia and Iran, because they are a threat to Washington's unilateral actions.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday.

He was commenting on a statement by the head of the US Special Operations Command, General Joseph Votel, who said on Friday that Russia "could pose an existential threat" to the United States.

"Let me clarify what the word or the term existential threat means," Roberts said.

"When a general says this as a public statement, it tells the American people that Russia is a threat to the very existence of the United States, and it causes them to think that Russia may attack the United States with nuclear weapons, or maybe preparing to do that.

"So it creates a fear that Washington can use [it] for its agenda. We're going to talk about what that agenda is. But what does it mean to Washington to say that Russia is a threat to its existence?

"What it means to Washington is that Russia has an independent foreign policy.

"We have reached the point in the United States that the drive for hegemony over the world – the importance for Washington of remaining the uni-power – that drive is now so strong that a country that has an independent foreign policy is regarded as an enemy, or a threat.

"What they mean is that it's a threat to Washington's unilateral action. They don't mean it's a threat to the existence of a country in the sense that the American people understand that word."

Dr. Roberts said  that "what we have is a situation where countries with independent foreign policy, that's countries that do not always accommodate Washington; they are now regarded as enemy countries.

"So that's one of the meanings of these statements, that Russia is a threat.

"The other meaning is that in the United States the military security complex has a budget from taxpayers, from public funds – a budget of one trillion dollars. I believe that is about two and a half times the size of the Iranian gross domestic product… just for the military security complex.

"So these are very large firms entirely dependent on public appropriations, that's where their revenues come from."

Dr. Roberts said if you have a budget of one trillion dollars, "you have to have a reason, especially when Americans themselves are having hard times, that's the people who are paying the taxes."

He added that a lot of these have "lost houses, on the verge of losing them. The young people have student debts they can't pay, they can't get jobs.  A lot of people are having trouble of paying their medical insurance, even with some of the subsidies that ObamaCare provides.