Tag: Congress
Stevenson’s army, September 23
– NYT has good story on cyber options against Iran.
– One of the features of Continuing Resolutions, which Congress is ready to approve to keep the government funded until November 21, is that they not only keep spending at the previous year’s level but also ban new starts. DOD is already noting which important programs will suffer delays.
– Congress has also discovered that the Saudis still haven’t paid $181 million owed US for air refueling operations.
– I commend Charlie Dunlap’s call for a apolitical 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. 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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Stevenson’s army, September 10
At last some worthwhile stories about Congress, just back from its 6 week recess.
– RollCall says departing members will find it hard to get K St lobbying jobs.
– Another story notes that bipartisanship still works in actually passing bills.
– Guess where one in seven Representatives traveled during the recess. [Israel].
– NYT has more detailed story on extraction of spy close to Putin. Unlike the original CNN story, the Times links the action to concerns about discovery in 2016, not Trump behavior with classified information.
What next in Afghanistan? Central Command leader says more US military activities.
– On civil-military relations, I agree with this piece by Prof Karlin and others praising SecDef Esper’s efforts to reassert civilian control of DOD.
– But I’m not persuaded by this piece arguing turning most paramilitary operations from CIA to SOCOM. But it’s worth debating.
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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Putin’s dream President
Rachel Maddow last night did a particularly good job documenting President Trump’s efforts to comply with President Putin’s fondest dreams:
Trump is not merely mouthing belief in Putin. He is doing things to please him. Odds are that Russian money is part of the reason. Let’s hope the various ongoing investigations, in particular of Deutsche Bank, clarify that in the next few months.
The dismantling of NATO efforts to defend Europe is particularly worrisome, as it won’t generate the same kind of domestic political backlash that canceling construction projects in Virginia will. It will also more directly weaken deterrence of Russian aggression, not only in Ukraine.
Trump may not be a Russian agent, but he is certainly doing as much as the Congress will allow to serve Putin’s (not necessarily Russia’s) interests. But Vladimir’s popularity is waning in Russia like Trump’s in America and Boris Johnson’s in Britain. It will be a happy day when all three are out of power.
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Stevenson’s army, August 26
[The Congress class starts next week, so I’ll be giving extra emphasis to news about the legislative branch.]
Congress will be in session only 15 days in September, then recessing for two weeks [Jewish high holidays]. Lawmakers have to fund the government, probably by passing a short term continuing resolution. They dodged a bullet by approving a two year budget topline and suspending the debt limit last month.
Another July accomplishment was a new law making it easier for congressional offices to do constituent casework that requires some kind of approval paperwork.
In an apparent effort to preclude further stock market declines, President Trump said the Chinese had called and wanted to restart trade talks. Bloomberg says the Chinese Foreign Ministry knows of no such calls, and other US officials previously said there would be more talks next week. Anyway, the president has now discovered the International Emergency Economic Powers Act [IEEPA] and thinks it would allow him to forbid US companies from having Chinese customers or subsidiaries. Here’s background on IEEPA from the Congressional Research Service, and another paper on broader national emergencies laws. [Note that both CRS and FAS have CRS papers now.]
The Atlantic has a piece showing China’s effective soft power at work.
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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