Stevenson’s army, October 8
It’s really unclear what administration policy in Syria is this morning. The president announced a pullout of US forces. When criticized, he said he would destroy the Turkish economy if they did something bad. State Dept said US hadn’t approved a Turkish invasion of Syria. DOD deleted SecDef Esper’s tweet saying the same thing. So consider these nuggets: An NSC person who listened in to the Trump-Erdogan phone call on Sunday said Trump got rolled. NYT defense correspondents say DOD has tried to months to keep the US presence in Syria out of Trump’s sight and may still keep several hundred troops there. Other sources hint the same.
The administration has forbidden Amb. Sondland to give planned testimony on Ukraine today, reinforcing the view that congressional oversight has been fundamentally blocked on many fronts.
A Chinese trade group is coming to talks in DC this week, but?/therefore? the administration announced sanctions on 28 individuals over Uighur abuses.
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).
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