Category: Daniel Serwer
The Biden-Putin professional wrestling match
President Biden and Russian President Putin will meet Wednesday in Geneva. Biden has a long-standing distaste for Putin, whose behavior in recent years will have made Biden even more critical. Since their last meeting in 2011, Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, had a leading opposition figure murdered just outside the Kremlin, deployed troops and aircraft to Syria to support dictator Assad with a wide array of war crimes, tried to murder an ex-Russian intelligence agent in Great Britain, tried to murder and then jailed another opposition leader on trumped-up charges, backed Belaruan autocrat Lukashenko after he engineered massive election fraud, and is now busily shutting down what remains of political opposition and civil society in Russia. That is on top of the many episodes of election interference in the US in favor of Donald Trump, Russian hacking of US government cyber systems, and Russian tolerance for cyber ransom attacks that have several times closed important American companies.
It is no surprise there will not be a joint press conference after the Putin/Biden summit. While there may be some positive news on specific issues like arms control, climate change, or the Iran nuclear deal, the atmospherics surrounding this meeting are 180 degrees opposite from President Trump’s attempted lovefest with Putin in 2018, when he said at a joint press conference that he believed Putin’s denials of election interference and not the unanimous rejected the unanimous view of American intelligence agencies.
The choreography leading up to next week’s summit has been careful, perhaps even masterful. Biden, committed to rekindling traditional American alliances, met first in Cornwall with UK Prime Minister Johnson, then rallied the G7 (that’s Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan, as well as the UK and the US) to focus on China and cybersecurity, and next week he will meet first with America’s 29 NATO allies before confronting Putin. Unlike his three predecessors, Biden does not want a “reset” with Putin. He wants to confront him where needed but leave the door open to cooperation on specific issues and even improved relations overall if Putin stops his perfidies.
But Biden knows he won’t. Putin has been in many ways a successful President. Russians often give him credit for revival of their pride and their aspirations to great power status after the economically difficult Yeltsin period. His personal popularity is low at the moment, but he is committed to holding on to power by autocratic if democratic means fail. Russian parliamentary elections in September (and the presidential election in 2024) will be far from free and fair. There is not much the Americans can do about that. Even getting Alexei Navalny out of jail is more than they have managed so far.
Putin will want to use the meeting with Biden to shore up his domestic support. He can do that best by being confrontational. Biden, who has much stronger domestic support, will want to do the same thing. He will want to be seen as calling Putin out on election hacking, cybersecurity, and repression of the Russian opposition. Neither bodes well for the occasion. This summit is likely to be like “professional” wrestling: more theater than real, staged for TV and radio, but still with some possibility one or the other protagonist gets hurt.
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Stevenson’s army, June 12
CRS has new study of China’s PLA.
WSJ tells how FBI captured the ransom Bitcoin.
WSJ says Turkey is key to Afghan pullout.
In FP, SAIS prof Edward P. Joseph discusses Balkan policy.
DOD announces security assistance to Ukraine.
NYT has special anniversary report on Pentagon papers. Here’s online link. Haven’t seen a hard copy.
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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Stevenson’s army, June 11
– Russia is providing Iran with an advanced satellite.
– US is lifting some Iran sanctions, says not related to stalled negotiations.
– FP notes international law prohibits US interference with Iranian ships going to Venezuela
– House also has a compete with China bill.
-SAIS prof Mark Cancian notes surprises in Biden defense budget.
– In FT, Gillian Tett has insightful piece on the“Cornwall Consensus” on politics and economics.
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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Stevenson’s army, June 10
NYT says Pentagon plans air strikes from abroad to save Kabul if necessary.
DOD vaguely announces plans to counter China. Briefer has more details, including changes to PME.
Dan Drezner searches for a Biden doctrine.
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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Stevenson’s army, June 9
The Biden administration has released its first formal war powers summary report. It’s the first in a year, since the Trump administration failed to submit one as required in its final month in office. The report shows US troops equipped for combat in 16 countries. No surprises, but an important benchmark.
The White House also released a formal letter waiving a provision of last year’s NDAA forbidding troop cuts in Afghanistan unless the president submitted a huge report answering all kinds of questions about the situation there.
No report, but the law allows a waiver.
The Senate passed a 2400-page bill to counter China technologically. Anything that big and that popular becomes a catch all for special interest provisions. I haven’t seen a neutral analysis, but the Hill has a short “5 takeaways” on the measure.
CRS finally has its demographic summary of the 117th Congress
TNSR has a new piece on civilian control of the military.
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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Stevenson’s army, June 8
– Two Senate committees have issued a bipartisan staff report on the January 6 insurrection. Politico summarizes.
– FBI seizes most of the Bitcoin paid as ransom by Colonial Pipeline. [See, it’s a criminal matter, not national security retaliation.]
– FP reports internal dissent over Pacific basing plans.
– Biden overturns Trump plan to put Greenland under NorthCom.
Some of you may remember my stories about how Walmart, Microsoft, Apple all had DC offices with fewer than a handful of people in the early 2000s. Then they learned that what the govt did could affect their businesses. Now they — and Facebook and Amazon — have big DC offices. And they know how to grow their businesses. See what Amazon does.
A pro-foreign aid group [yes, it exists] has a summary of the administration budget.
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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