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Stevenson’s army, September 20

• Politico takes suggestions from a wide range of people and comes up with “99 ways to fix American politics.” Most of the suggestions are small bore, maybe helping on the margins. But the causes are much deeper, driven by demographics and partisan incentives and Supreme Court decisions that aren’t easily reversed.
• The fight between the administration and the House Intelligence Committee is over oversight powers. By law, an “urgent” whistleblower complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General is supposed to be shared with the intelligence committees. This hasn’t been done.
• Meanwhile two sources have told the Post and the Times that the matter involved President Trump and Ukraine. [The suspicion is that Trump promised the release of military aid to Ukraine, which was done last week, on condition that it take certain actions relating to Paul Manafort and the Biden family.]
  On Iran, the Pentagon is bragging that it is giving the president military options.
• The NYT wonders why the $150 billion in recent arms sales to Saudi Arabia didn’t guard against the oil facilities attacks.
• John Hannah, longtime Cheney hardliner, warns that US and Israel face conflicts over China.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).