Tag: South Korea
Stevenson’s army, December 24
– NYT says US plans major drawdown from west Africa.
– Pro-foreign aid group lists details of budget agreement on function 150 spending.
– Administration has new cyber security R&D plan.
– Xi brings Abe and Moon together.
– BBC says ISIS is rebuilding in Iraq.
PS: Merry Christmas!
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, November 22
– Earlier, NYT said decision uncertain on Hong Kong bill. This Morning, Trump says he doesn’t like it.
– WaPo has background on effort to pardon military personnel. David Ignatius decries decision.
– Pause in South Korea-Japan spat,
CAP has ideas for reducing foreign influence in US elections.
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, November 21
– To me, the most significant foreign policy exchange in the Democratic presidential candidate debate was the widespread sharp criticism of Saudi Arabia. I don’t see how any of them can back off that if elected.
– Meanwhile, the US is sending more troops to Saudi Arabia.
– But DOD denies planning troop withdrawals from South Korea.
– FP article raises a concern I share — the vulnerability of US forces given advanced technology available to others.
– The docudrama about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “torture report” opens in theaters and will stream after Thanksgiving. RollCall tells a story about how the key staffer found his way in DC through networking. Good lessons for Hill job seekers.
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, November 16
-WSJ has an article urging a US industrial policy which I find persuasive.
– The Nuclear Threat Initiative has a background paper on Russia’s new weaponry.
– TNSR has a roundtable on reforming the war powers processes.
– Bloomberg reviews the changing Trump trade policies.
– Meanwhile, Trump pardoned war criminals, contrary to DOD recommendations.
– South Korea rejects intelligence sharing with Japan.
And this from WSJ:
U.S. MILITARY reduces press access to combat troops
in Afghanistan. War correspondents accompanied Marines into the country
in 2001, and for years the Pentagon facilitated front-line visits.
After Special Forces and Rangers took the combat lead in 2014, embeds
became rarer.
In the past year, the number of embeds with the 13,000 U.S. troops remaining in the country has declined sharply. The message from Kabul HQ: “We do attempt to make every opportunity available to cover other events—such as the important train, advise and assist mission the Coalition of 40 nations is conducting.”
This year, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has largely ceased speaking to the international media in the Afghan capital. Commanders and diplomats fear U.S. news coverage could lead President Trump to tweet a strategic reversal or further upend peace talks. They glimpsed that possibility with Trump’s surprise withdrawal from Syria.
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Stevenson’s army, November 15
– The US wants South Korea to pay 500% more for US troop deployments.
– North Korea issued a warning to US. Here’s the detailed statement.
– NYT lists disagreements between Trump and US military.
– Here’s more from Senators in the meeting with Erdogan.
-LA Times notes a nuclear problem in the Pacific.
–Legal background on executive privilege.
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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More diplomacy, less force
A friend asked today what I thought of the current situation in Syria. I responded:
Predictable and predicted. The Syria commitment was not sustainable. The US needs to reduce its commitments to the Middle East to a level that serves vital interests and is sustainable. It should do that carefully, using diplomacy to ensure no vacuums are left. That can’t happen with this President.
I guess that puts me at least partly in Elizabeth Warren’s camp and opposed to Josh Rogin, who is a fine journalist but far more of an enthusiast for US engagement in the Middle East than I am.
Let me recount the reasons:
- The US is far less dependent on oil, including oil from the Middle East, than once it was.
- The spread of US unconventional production technology has made it difficult for oil prices to top $60/barrel for long. That is a price the US and world economy can and does tolerate easily.
- Other countries should, as Presidents Trump and Obama have suggested, bear more of the burden of protecting Middle East oil supplies, in particular the Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans since they take most of the oil coming through the strait of Hormuz.
- Middle East producers should be doing more to build pipelines that circumvent Hormuz, and consumers (especially India and China) should be building strategic oil stocks for use in a supply disruption.
- American allies in the Middle East should, after many billions in US arms sales, mainly protect themselves. Israel does already. The Saudis and Emiratis as well as the Qataris should too. Needless to say, the Turks will have to after this latest brush with the US.
- Many American bases in the Middle East are too close to Iran to serve well in wartime. They will need to be evacuated if the balloon ever goes up. Better to get them out sooner rather than later.
- If you are still worried about Middle East terrorism, there is no reason to believe that the drone wars have done anything to reduce it. To the contrary, US presence in the region makes us a prime target.
- The right answer to terrorism is better governance, not drones. Find the people who are serious about improved governance and support them, not the thieves and oppressors who rule in much of the Middle East.
- If you want to counter Russian influence in the Middle East, clearly an unsustainable military presence is not the solution. Syria is going to be a big burden on Moscow. Let them deal with it.
- If you are worried about Iran, get back into the nuclear deal (aka JCPOA) as quickly as possible and try to negotiate an extension. The only serious complaint I am hearing from anyone about the JCPOA is that it expires.
The American drawdown from the Middle East should not be precipitous. It should be cautious and leave no power vacuums. That is what diplomacy is for: we need to be working on regional security arrangements that can guarantee that no one’s interests will be ignored and reasonable compromises will prevail. That effort will require serious attention to threat perceptions, regional trade and infrastructure, people-to-people relations, and traditional conflict management mechanisms in the region. Yes, more diplomacy, less force, and a lot of hard work and commonsense.
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