Stevenson’s army, December 4
-Despite the Senate’s recent dysfunction, the government is funded until Feb 18. We still don’t know how the debt ceiling will be handled — and the deadline could be as soon as Dec 21. Meanwhile, the armed services leadership, stymied by Senators insisting on having their amendments voted on, is looking to skip Senate amendments altogether. The leaders plan to work out a conference deal on the NDAA, let the House pass it as a new bill, and force the Senate to accept it. FYI, I like this bipartisan idea for the debt ceiling.
– In a very curious leak, WaPo says Russia has plans to invade Ukraine by late January. The story, attributed only to “US officials”, also included an unclassified document depicting Russian troop movements. The fact of such an unclassified document suggests to me that the administration wants to build a very public case against the Russian moves. Saying Russia has “plans” is also different from saying Russia has the clear intent to act. I suspect the IC has details of a basic plan, accompanied by realistic troop deployments as part of an exercise, which could be turned into an invasion.
-Politico has an unusual piece about Chancellor Merkel with more negatives than positive. Worth reading.
-Good for the EU: more convergence with US on China, and its own BRI.
– Civ-mil problems: dropping confidence in the US military and extremist sentiments in Army & Marine Corps.
– WSJ has section from Prof Brands’ new book on how to contain 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. 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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I can’t say I agree with the Politico. Merkel on occasion made decisions I didn’t seen anyone courageous enough in the EU or in the US to face. Refugees crisis, driven from Syria to the EU by Russian actions, and on political front the EU attacked with well known insiders from within the EU and Lavrov (and Liberal Democracy is obsolete by Putin) how refugees are killing, raping, all over the EU, Germany was especially targeted. I guess the same playbook is being used now just failed Poland leaning to the right and to f* you and your playbook to Putin.
That said, Germany is not a superpower, nor is Merkel a PM, president, or chancellor of one. Germans are reluctant historically to take on bigger role in the EU, one might say afraid. I think they should, but it is the way it is. I wish balkans tribes were that reluctant to meddle in neighboring countries businesses. Or Russia. She did a decent job for Germany. Stable Germany, stable EU. The EU is not the US in the way of integrations, for what could’ve been done after 2008 she was stabilizing factor. Attacked from the left (left likes her for the handling of the refugee crisis I guess) and from the Wall Street for austerity program. Then again, the EU is not agile as the US when it comes to the economy and to the market. Stable, quiet, no-nonsense, decent, continuing job of her predecessors and improving on it (not messing it up like Trump) … Not a bad way to be and live. Attacking her for not being harder on China or Russia, please. Both since Bush Jr. the US partners. Trump was just boasting at home while promising China whatnot. Russia let us not go there. Putin did screw over Obama. But since Biden is not a fool, he’ll treat Putin the way it should. Fool me once (Obama) … What’s Merkel now? Scapegoat? I wish the world power houses were run by decent folks like Merkel (though Obama and Biden are). Don’t know how much decency is valued these days.