Tag: Defense
Stevenson’s army, July 3
WSJ says Putin is taking over Wagner’s assets.
Vox argues its African operations create dependencies more than revenues.
NYT podcast gives more Wagner background.
New Yorker rounds up expert views of Putin today.
WaPo suggests administration is pressuring Hill on cluster munitions for Ukraine.
State approves more arms for Taiwan.
Politico says Tuberville poses problems for JCS succession.
Court rules military cases don’t require unanimous verdicts.
CJCS Milley gave talk at National Press Club. CSPAN has tape and transcript.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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 23
– Politico reports on HASC NDAA
– Hill sees split between Senate and House GOP over defense
– Carter Malkasian urges Korea armistice model for Ukraine
– Defense News compares German and other national security strategies
– Talented Trump NSC deputy, Nadia Schadlow, has good points on strategy
– History: when US spies searched for Confederate VP
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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 21
-D Brief explains Somali requests for US military help
– EU considers a “Marshall Plan” for Ukraine
– Congress may not save the A10s
– Democrats criticize GOP cuts in international spending
-Modi discusses relations with US
– WSJ reports Chinese tech workers in Cuba
– WaPo has its story on US-Iranian talks
– NYT hits Senate for nomination delays
-Axios notes loww congressional productivity because of messaging bills
– Media hit for paying more attention to Titanic tourists than dying migrants.
– Noah Smith raises doubts about Chinese economic strength.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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 16, 2023
Dan Ellsberg, who had a distinguished career in national security before leaking the Pentagon Papers, has died at 92. Fred Kaplan offers an appreciation. [I’ve pasted below a long excerpt from his memoir about advice he gave to Henry Kissinger about having access to government secrets.
Read the indictment of Jack Teixiera, the Discord leaker.
In other news, Hungary has cancelled weapons purchase that some in Congress had blocked.
Sen. Tuberville has been offered a vote on his bill, but he still blocks nominees.
Liz Schrayer, who heads a group that lobbies for more foreign aid [yes, there is one] has an op-ed on countering China. She reports elsewhere that “the House Appropriations Committee proposed dangerous cuts of 31% to America’s footprint in the world,” presumably meaning the GOP cut the allocation for the State/Foreign ops bill.
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Ellsberg to Kissinger, 1968 [from Ellsberg’s memoir, Secrets]
“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.
“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.
“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools.
“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.
“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.
“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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
– How many wars are we in today? WH releases latest war powers report.
– Watson Institute at Brown criticizes defense spending.
– There’s a fight over sending troops to Haiti. US wants a UN force; author argues against it.
– Corruption leads US to cut aid to Ethiopia.
– Another Discord leak from WaPo: Saudi prince threatened severe economic pain on US
– Effort to label Wagner a terrorist group fails.
– FT has details of Iranian drones to Russia.
– NYT says satellites saw dam explosion.
– Florida man goes to jail for keeping classified documents. No, a different Florida man.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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
-WaPo says the Ukrainian offensive has begun.
– WSJ says China is building a “spy base” in Cuba.
– European opinion isn’t so hostile to China, NYT reports. Here’s the poll.
– Military journalist Mark Thompson notes poor maintenance of US equipment:
One of the most interesting things about covering the Pentagon is the surprises you get when it’s caught with its cammies down. Take, for example, the massive stockpiles of weapons the U.S. military has stored around the world, primed to be shipped to the front lines and into battle within days. “The Army Prepositioned Stock program is a cornerstone of the Army’s ability to rapidly project power and send a clear signal of U.S. commitment,” the service says (PDF).
Um, not so much.
We’d likely never have learned just how unready this Army arsenal is if Vladimir Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine. The U.S. has provided Ukraine with nearly $40 billion in military aid (PDF) since Russia invaded 15 months ago, nearly half (PDF) of which has come from U.S. military stockpiles. Some came from a U.S. depot in Kuwait, which is the subject of a Pentagon inspector general’s report released May 25. “We identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the IG said.
The inquiry examined the state of Ukraine-bound M777 howitzers and M1167 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles. The Army had “identified the equipment as fully mission capable and ready for issue to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the IG noted (PDF). Au contraire: the inspector general concluded that a stunning 91% of the guns and vehicles (32 of 35) were, in fact, not ready for war.
The cannons were so poorly maintained they “would have killed somebody” (PDF) — and it wouldn’t have been the enemy. Quarterly inspections and repairs hadn’t been done for 19 months, leading to internal gun misalignments on four of the six guns “that could be fatal to the crew operating the howitzer.” Old hydraulic fluid had been recycled, which the operator’s manual forbids (PDF) because it can cause “disastrous results and malfunctions of critical systems.” Once shipped to Europe, worn firing pins and faulty firing mechanisms further delayed the guns’ delivery to Ukraine.
Twenty-six of the 29 M1167 tank-killing Humvees weren’t operational due to dead batteries, fluid leaks, broken gauges, and other woes. Tires on 25 of them had to be replaced due to dry rot. One Humvee tire shredded because of the problem on its way to Ukraine; the spare also failed “due to dry rot” (PDF).
The U.S. military has paid contractors close to $1 billion (PDF) to keep the gear in Kuwait ready for combat since 2016. But apparently that’s not enough (PDF). Which is why the U.S. Army graciously included a note to their Ukrainian allies along with one of the Humvees lacking a part. In the middle of a war for Ukraine’s survival, the U.S. Army suggested Ukraine seek the MIA part “through the established process for requesting parts” (PDF).
That’s the U.S. military’s key to victory: send in the paperwork.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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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