Tag: Defense
Stevenson’s army, May 24
– NYT, which has had powerful and innovative front pages in recent weeks — like the red unemployment charts — today fills its front page with brief identifications of several hundred coronavirus victims. Broadsheets have impacts you can never have online.
– On this Memorial Day weekend, NYT lead editorial says the US Army “celebrates white supremacy” with it many bases named after Confederate officials. There was an even better article on the same theme in WOTR recently.
-The pandemic is likely to slow if not scuttle European defense plans.
-Worst-case worries: election planners wonder if Trump will accept a loss.
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, May 23
-SAIS grad and former SASC staff director Chris Brose, who was in a Strat webinar Friday, has a section from his new book in WSJ.
-Prof Brands and Jake Sullivan say China has 2 paths to global leadership, and we in America may be expecting the wrong one.
-Fred Kaplan defends the Open Skies treaty.
-Meanwhile, the Administration ponders conducting the first nuclear test since 1992.
– NYT lays out options in US response to Hong Kong crackdown.
– WSJ cites study saying jungle primaries lead to more moderate candidates [click on the “new research” link for the actual study].
TOP-TWO PRIMARIES in congressional elections, in which candidates of all parties run in the same primary and then the top two finishers face off in a second round, are associated with more moderate legislators, according to new research by University of Southern California political scientist Christian Grose. Open primaries, in which voters of any party registration can vote in a party primary, also reduce ideological extremity, though to a lesser degree than the top-two scheme. Just three states—California, Louisiana and Washington—used the top-two system in 2020, but Grose suggests “that those in the policy community looking for ways to reduce ideological extremity among legislators” should consider them.
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, May 21
– AP reports on hypersonic missiles, presumably what the president meant when he spoke of a “super duper” missile. CRS has a new backgrounder on them.
– Though we still don’t know what legal authorities the vaccine “Operation Warp Speed” committee has, the COO is a dollar a year contractor with messy ties to the drug industry.
-For those with children, see this NYT article on recognizing symptoms of the inflammatory reaction perhaps linked to the coronarvirus.
– NYT says Trump is hard for the intelligence community to brief.
– Politico says senior officials from several agencies opposed the Saudi arms sale that Pompeo accelerated.
– Politico also says administration will seek short term extension of New START.
– A former IG in 2 departments explains how they do their job.
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, May 18
– I strongly favor a rapid development of an effective and safe vaccine against Covid-19. We all do. But I’m not persuaded that the White House is doing that. On Friday the president announced Operation Warp Speed. He named the head of the Army Materiel Command as “chief operating officer” and a former top official at GlaxoSmithKline as “chief advisor.” HHS put out a press release promising major activities. But I can’t find anywhere an executive order empowering this WH committee to give orders or allocate funds or do the things an executive agency needs to do. Government needs execution and execution relies on authorities.
– NYT has more on the Pompeo activities that triggered an IG investigation by the now-fired State Dept IG.
– Space Command launches a bidding war for its new HQ. [I’ll bet AF gets the announcement out before Nov 3]
– Politico tells what life is like at WH nowadays because of the coronavirus.
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, May 17
– NYT has long story revealing that WH aide Peter Navarro, in addition to being a hawk on China trade and conduit for companies seeking coronavirus contracts, has regularly pushed government agencies in favor of arms sales, notably to Saudi Arabia.
After the Yemen war began in 2015 and the Obama administration made a hasty decision to back the Saudis, Raytheon booked more than $3 billion in new bomb sales, according to an analysis of available U.S. government records.
Intent on pushing the deals through, Raytheon followed the industry playbook: It took advantage of federal loopholes by sending former State Department officials, who were not required to be registered as lobbyists, to press their former colleagues to approve the sales.
And though the company was already embedded in Washington — its chief lobbyist, Mark Esper, would become Army secretary and then defense secretary under Mr. Trump — Raytheon executives sought even closer ties.
They assiduously courted Mr. Navarro, who intervened with White House officials on Raytheon’s behalf and successfully pressured the State Department, diminished under Mr. Trump, to process the most contentious deals.
They also enlisted the help of David J. Urban, a lobbyist whose close ties to Mr. Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo go back to the 1980s, when all three men were at West Point.
As the nation turned against the war, a range of American officials — Democratic and Republican — tried three times to halt the killing by blocking arms sales to the Saudis. Their efforts were undone by the White House, largely at the urging of Raytheon.
– Dan Balz at WaPo details how the administration has “hollowed out” the federal government, weakening its ability to respond to the pandemic.
– WaPo Fact Checker discredits claim that Trump shipped 17 Tons of medical equipment to 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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Stevenson’s army, May 9
– The USTR has released its annual trade policy report, with lots of discussion of Chinese practices. Nothing comparable from Peter Navarro, who is supposed to be busy getting companies to produce medical supplies.
– The president himself doesn’t know whether to call his Chinese trade deal a success or failure.
– To avoid border wall fights, Senate Appropriations will delay DHS, Veterans and MilCon bills until the expected big political fight in the fall — but will go ahead with other spending bills.
– Maybe South Korea declared victory too early.
– As most of you know, I have high regard for my former boss, Joe Biden. But I was appalled to read of the campaign’s amateurish efforts to produce a virtual rally.
– And if you want to contrast the smart Trump juggernaut with the oh too 20th century Biden approach, read this.
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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