Tag: Defense
Stevenson’s army, February 8
George Shultz, who served in 4 senior cabinet positions in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, including Secretary of State, died on Saturday. Dan Drezner has a fine appreciation, including links to other good articles.
Over the years, I’ve found several teaching points from Shultz’s career.
1. He explained how the policy process is never-ending, with fights recurring even after presidential decisions. Nothing ever gets settled in this town, a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me.
2. He threatened to resign 14 times to gain leverage for his proposals — but never had to follow through.
3. The toxic relationship between him and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger pervaded State and DOD, making interagency cooperation nearly impossible for years. It was even worse than the Powell-Rumsfeld fights in the early 2000s. Reagan refused to choose between his two friends, so both continued to push contradictory policies. Weinberger, for example, wanted to limit the use of force to strategic enemies; Shultz insisted on fighting terrorists, calling Weinberger’s tests “the codification of the Vietnam syndrome.”
In other news, WSJ notes that China is winning the war of setting technical standards for new technologies.
– NYT sees a pattern in Biden’s trade appointments
-FP reviews a book about centrist diplomacy.
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, February 6
– Bloomberg says Biden administration wants to give economic incentives to Iran without lifting sanctions.
-SecDef Austin announces global review.
– FP deconstructs Biden foreign policy speech.
-Lawfare reviews Biden’s history on war powers.
– NYT reports “muddled intelligence” hindered police response to Capitol attack. See also their reporting on organized groups involved.
Ya gotta love the Senate [as I do]. It takes unanimous consent in order for Senators and staff to use electronic devices in the chamber. Hence this UC, which was adopted: Congressional Budget Resolution–Agreement: A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that for the duration of the Senate’s consideration of S. Con. Res. 5, setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2021 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2022 through 2030, the Majority and Republican managers of the concurrent resolution, while seated or standing at the managers’ desks, be permitted to deliver floor remarks, retrieve, review, and edit documents, and send email and other data communications from text displayed on wireless personal digital assistant devices and tablet devices; provided further that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor during consideration of the resolution; and that the staff be permitted to make technical and conforming changes to the resolution, if necessary, consistent with the amendments adopted during Senate consideration, including calculating the associated change in the net interest function, and incorporating the effect of such adopted amendments on the budgetary aggregates for Federal revenues, the amount by which the Federal revenues should be changed, new budget authority, budget outlays, deficits, public debt, and debt held by the public
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Stevenson’s army, February 4
– President Biden makes major foreign pol;icy speech this afternoon during visit to State Dept.
-Politico reports how he spends his days.
– WSJ notes that his China advisers are a “team of rivals.”
– The Axios weekly China report summarizes the many proposed approaches to China.
Last year Congress created an Afghanistan Study Group, probably with the intent or expectation that outside experts would question the Trump policy of rapid withdrawal. That’s how it worked out. The full report is here.
And the troop withdrawals from Germany are now on hold.
The Senate has approved a power-sharing arrangement much like what was done in 2001. Democrats now control the committee agendas. Here’s the new list of Democratic members.
New resource on congressional redistricting.
CNAS has a bunch of reports on Iran.
National Security Archive has compiled declassified report on Rumsfeld’s notorious snowflakes.
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, February 3
Quick administration decision on Myanmar coup.
Resource: CFR Global Conflict Tracker.
Politico says EU goes “soft” on China because of climate change, in contrast to US.
Dan Drezner notes that people inside the Beltway are more hawkish on China than those in the heartland.
SecDef Austin empties advisory panels, will name new people.
Kath Hicks has “smooth” confirmation hearing for DepSecDef.
Defense industry in poor shape.Defen
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, February 2
The past 11 months have been like one Groundhog Day after another, right? Or should we call it a year of Blursdays?
In the news, the Biden administration is arguing over how to respond to the coup in Myanmar. CNN says they might not officially call it a “coup” in order to avoid triggering the law that requires an immediate halt to US aid.
[Remember what the Obama administration did following the coup in Egypt? They didn’t want to halt aid, so they determined that the law had no requirement to acknowledge a coup, just a requirement to cut off aid if they did. So they didn’t.]
Equal time: I reported the study questioning the effectiveness of US hypersonic weapons programs. Here’s the DOD rebuttal.
Just Security has a summary of the nomination hearing for the new UN Ambassador.
Two academics have some ideas on how to change US overseas military basing
Harvard’s Steve Walt analyzes President Xi’s speech at virtual Davos.
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, January 29
Bipartisan Senate group looks to rules changes short of ending filibusters.
NSC shifts from Middle East to China issues
BTW, China says Taiwan independence means war.
FEMA asks for troops to help in vaccinations.
DOD blocks admission of Trump loyalists to advisory boards.
DOD questions Taliban compliance with deal.
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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