MCCAIN’S DIAGNOSIS: There is no more influential member of the Senate when it comes to national security policy than Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, whose office confirmed last night that the 80-year-old senator has brain cancer. Examination of tissue removed last week during a procedure to remove a blood clot over his left eye revealed a type of brain tumor known as a glioblastoma. McCain, who is said to be in “good spirits” is reviewing treatment options with his medical team from the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, which could include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. “The Senator’s doctors say he is recovering from his surgery ‘amazingly well’ and his underlying health is excellent,” said a statement released last night. “Further consultations with Senator McCain’s Mayo Clinic care team will indicate when he will return to the United States Senate.”
The news shocked McCain’s colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress and prompted an outpouring of well-wishes, none more poignant than from his best friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, who talked to McCain by phone last night. “Pray,” said Graham. “I don’t know, God knows how this ends, not me. But I do know this: this disease has never had a more worthy opponent.”
WHAT IT MEANS: While he continues his recovery at his home in Arizona, McCain’s absence will be felt in ways large and small. Aside from the obvious, the loss of a Republican vote in a chamber that has little margin for error in any partisan vote, McCain also is a fierce advocate for congressional oversight. Last week, frustrated over the delay in receiving a new Afghanistan strategy from the Trump administration, he threatened to insert his own into the National Defense Authorization Act. The House passed the NDAA last week, which means McCain is being sidelined just as the upper chamber prepares to debate and vote on its version of the bill. McCain is also a key player in the confirmation process for Pentagon nominees, and has warned the White House about filling so many top DoD spots with executives from the top five defense contractors.
INDUSTRY EXECS PILE UP: Meanwhile President Trump’s Army secretary nominee is the latest in a growing list of defense industry executives nominated or confirmed for top Pentagon positions, exactly what McCain was warning against. The White House plans to nominate Mark Esper, vice president of government relations at Raytheon, as the top civilian overseeing the Army. The administration is banking on Esper’s experience as an active-duty Army officer, and key legislative aide on Capitol Hill to offset his potential conflicts of interest stemming from his current job as a top lobbyist for Raytheon. A source close to the White House noted Esper’s nomination could create a “very interesting” situation given that his position would require him to sit on the Defense Acquisition Board, an advisory panel within the Pentagon that collectively decides what systems to purchase. Esper would be forced to recuse himself from any contracts with Raytheon.
TRUMP’S TANK SESSION: Trump, who gave a wide-ranging interview to the New York Times yesterday, does not plan to make any public statements when his visits the Pentagon this morning, according to Pentagon officials. The plan is for Trump to be greeted at the River entrance this morning, be escorted up the steps, take a left and walk about 25 paces to the secure briefing room used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff known as “the Tank.” The meeting is scheduled to run for an hour an half, and we are told the topic is a general update on progress in the fight against the Islamic State. This is not planned as a briefing on the new Afghanistan strategy that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis promised to deliver to the White House and Congress by “mid-July,” according to a Pentagon official, who noted that the president can bring up any subject he wants.
THE ANNIHILATION OF ISIS: The Senate got its own classified briefing yesterday afternoon on ISIS from Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford. Most senators were tight-lipped about what happened in the secure briefing area in the Senate basement, which coincidentally is also dubbed “the Tank,” but they said the officials delivered an update on current operations and not the long-awaited overarching Trump strategy to defeat the terror group.
Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was among the few who stepped in front of the cameras and recorders of staked-out reporters to talk up the ISIS update. “There is just a lot more clarity, a lot more focus on annihilation,” he said. “Anybody that listened to that hearing understands they’re all about killing every ISIS member they can get ahold of.” Corker batted away a question about what exactly has changed from the Obama administration strategy. “Comparisons are odious,” he said. Much of the previous administration’s strategy remains firmly in place, though as ISIS has lost ground, Mattis has employed a tactic of surrounding concentrations of ISIS forces, blocking escape routes and eliminating every fighter who doesn’t surrender.
Good Thursday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.
DON’T TAKE THAT MEETING MR. PRESIDENT: National security adviser Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster reportedly advised Trump against sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, this month, according to The Associated Press. The AP says McMaster expressed his disapproval of the meeting to foreign officials during the lead-up to the summit, and also told the officials that he disagreed as well with Trump’s decision to host Russian diplomats in an Oval Office meeting in May. McMaster is said to be worried Trump is not speaking out forcefully enough about Russian aggression in Europe, especially in light of Moscow’s meddling in the U.S. election.
“PLEASANTRIES” WITH PUTIN: In that interview with the New York Times, Trump again pushed back against the idea there was anything nefarious about his after-dinner chat with Putin at the spouses dinner in Hamburg. “The meal was going, and toward dessert I went down just to say hello to Melania, (who was seated next to Putin) and while I was there I said hello to Putin,” Trump explained. “Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about — things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.”
The Kremlin’s top spokesman called the whole fuss “absurd,” according to Reuters. “The use of a term like ‘undercover’ or ‘secret meeting’ raises eyebrows,” Dmitry Peskov told state TV. “They had a bilateral meeting that had been officially agreed through diplomatic canals, then they repeatedly exchanged views and remarks on the sidelines. There were no undercover or secret meetings and to assert that there were is absolutely absurd,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
OBAMA’S WEAKNESS: In that Times interview, Trump went on at length blaming the big foreign policy challenges he faces on what he sees as the failure of President Obama to act decisively. “Crimea was gone during the Obama administration, and he gave, he allowed it to get away,” Trump said. “You know, he can talk tough all he wants, in the meantime he talked tough to North Korea. And he didn’t actually. He didn’t talk tough to North Korea. You know, we have a big problem with North Korea. Big. Big, big,” Trump told the Times. “You look at all of the things, you look at the line in the sand. The red line in the sand in Syria. He didn’t do the shot. I did the shot.”
THE INFAMOUS DOSSIER: “Totally made-up stuff,” is how Trump described to so-called dossier of Russian kompromat that FBI Director James Comey showed Trump shortly after his election. “This is really made-up junk,” Trump said. “I didn’t think about anything. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal.” The dossier contained unconfirmed and unverifiable “compromising material” supposedly gathered during Trump’s time in Moscow. “I went there for one day for the Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back,” Trump said. “It was so disgraceful. It was so disgraceful.” Under questioning, Trump said he thought in hindsight that Comey showed him the report to hold it over his head as a form of leverage. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there.” “As leverage?” the Times asked. “Yeah, I think so. In retrospect. In retrospect,” Trump replied.
“NOT A SMART GUY” The other big headline out the interview was Trump’s trashing of his own attorney general, who he called “not a smart guy” for being “tricked” during his confirmation hearing into answering a question he was not asked about meeting with Russians. That led to Jeff Sessions having to correct the record, and then recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Trump, who felt blindsided, was furious. “Sessions should have never recused himself,” Trump said, “and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” Trump said Sessions gave him no inkling of what he was going to do. “Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself,” Trump said, “which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president.”
REBEL PROGRAM SHUT DOWN: In a nod toward Moscow, Trump is ending a CIA program to covertly arm rebels in Syria, according to a new report. U.S. support for rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad was a bipartisan, if controversial, plank of American policy in the country as recently as last fall. Obama began the shipments in 2013 and a GOP-led Congress eased restrictions on the program in 2016. But Russia and Turkey, a NATO ally, have accused the United States of backing terrorist groups.
“Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests,” according to the Washington Post, which first reported the move. “The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.”
HOUSE GETS SPACE BRIEF: Just as Chairman Mac Thornberry said last week, the House Armed Services Committee has continued to push forward with its effort to reorganize the military’s space operations and create a new Space Corps. Thornberry held a classified hearing Tuesday and all members were invited to a closed briefing Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office on current problems with space operations. “The GAO report cited numerous failed or failing acquisition programs, with billions of dollars of cost overruns because the current acquisition system is so complicated that no one is in charge,” Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Jim Cooper said in a release.
The two lawmakers, who are spearheading space reforms, said “the time for study is over: We must now act.” They also panned the Air Force for the claim by Secretary Heather Wilson and others that the Space Corps ordered in the House’s National Defense Authorization Act would create unneeded bureaucracy. Sixty Pentagon offices now deal with space operations, and it would become 61 if the Air Force goes ahead with plans to create a new deputy chief of staff position, which Rogers and Cooper claim is a “proposal designed to stop the Space Corps.”
AUMF LANGUAGE STRIPPED: House leadership has removed language from a defense spending bill that would have repealed the authorization to use military force against terrorists that Congress passed after the 9/11 attacks, drawing anger from the Democratic lawmaker who was able to include that repeal language in the bill in late June.
“This is underhanded & undemocratic,” Rep. Barbara Lee tweeted late Tuesday evening. “The people deserve a debate!” Lee authored an amendment to the spending bill that would repeal the authorization of military force that passed in 2001 and give Congress eight months to debate and pass a successor bill. With the support of a group of Republicans who broke with party leaders, her amendment was included in the bill, which seemed to set the stage for a debate about how much authority Trump ought to have to make war.
But the provision was jettisoned by the time it got to the Rules Committee, which is the last stop for legislation before it reaches the House floor. “[House Speaker Paul] Ryan should be ashamed of himself for forcing Republicans to strip out my bipartisan AUMF [amendment] in the dead of night,” Lee tweeted. “What is he afraid of?”
WITH ALLIES LIKE THESE: Turkish state-run media, Anadolu, published an article highlighting 10 U.S. military points in northern Syria. According to the Daily Beast, the maps include specific locations of eight military posts and two air bases near the Turkish border as well as troop counts for both U.S. and French forces.
The article lists three points in Haseke, two points in Münbic and three spots north of Raqqa. The U.S. first established air bases in the region during October 2015, but added supplemental sites in both March and April of 2016. The article suggested this was a retaliatory action by Turkey for weapons ending up in the hands of the Syrian Worker’s People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is assisting the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against ISIS.
THE RUNDOWN
Washington Post: ‘Tougher than a $2 steak’: Washington reacts to John McCain’s tumor diagnosis
Defense News: Textron, Sierra Nevada prep for OA-X experiment at U.S. Air Force base
Reuters: After Mosul, Islamic State digs in for guerrilla warfare
Roll Call: Barbara Lee to take AUMF repeal to Foreign Affairs
CNN: US Intelligence Shows North Korean Preparations For A Possible Missile Test
AP: Less than 1 aircraft carrier? The cost of N. Korea’s nukes
War on the Rocks: The best thing America built In Iraq: Iraq’s counter-terrorism service and the long war against militancy
New York Times: Qatar Criticizes Move By Antagonists
Wall Street Journal: Saudi Royal Drama Was Sealed With a Kiss
Military Times: U.S. armored vehicles seen pouring into Syria
Defense Tech: Officials say little about F-35 helmet glitch in night landing video
USNI News: Office of Naval Research set to upgrade the 200-year-old signal lamp for modern stealth communication
Washington Post: The Pentagon has tried to get Silicon Valley on its side for years. Now it’s part of the air war against ISIS.
The Times of London: First crisis for French president Macron as army chief General Pierre de Villiers quits over cuts
Foreign Policy: Is Russia really with Assad in Syria?
Calendar
THURSDAY | JULY 20
9:30 a.m. Dirksen 419. Kay Bailey Hutchison to be the permanent U.S. representative on the NATO council. foreign.senate.gov
10:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. The dangers of the looming constituent assembly in Venezuela and why the international community must act. csis.org
FRIDAY | JULY 21
8:30 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Venezuela on the edge and the time for new international action. atlanticcouncil.org
9:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Examining the geopolitical impact of the 4th Estate. csis.org
MONDAY | JULY 24
2 p.m. 1152 15th St. NW. Release of the report Higher, Heavier, Farther, and Now Undetectable? Bombers: Long-Range Force Projection in the 21st Century with Jerry Hendrix. cnas.org
TUESDAY | JULY 25
10 a.m. Rayburn 2172. Authorization for the Use of Military Force and current terrorist threats with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. foreignaffairs.house.gov
10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Future of vertical lift and forging a new paradigm with David Dowling of Northrop Grumman; Keith Flail with Bell Helicopter; Richard Koucheravy with Sikorsky; Dave Schreck of Rockwell Collins Government Systems; H. Eric “Delta” Burke of Harris Corporation; and Col. Robert Freeland with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. csis.org
12 p.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Lessons from Rome: Civic virtue and the empire’s decline with Hugh Liebert, associate professor at the United States Military Academy. heritage.org
2 p.m. Rayburn 2212. Evaluating DOD equipment and uniform procurement in Iraq and Afghanistan with John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. armedservices.house.gov
2 p.m. Rayburn 2172. Held for ransom: The families of Iran’s hostages speak out. foreignaffairs.house.gov
2:30 p.m. Russell 222. Options and considerations for achieving a 355-ship Navy from naval analysts. armed-services.senate.gov
WEDNESDAY | JULY 26
9 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. What a North Korean ballistic missile threat means for the U.S. missile defense system with Sen. Dan Sullivan. heritage.org
2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. History of U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific region. csis.org
4:30 p.m. 800 17th St. NW. 2017 Women In Defense HORIZONS Scholarship celebration. ndia.org
THURSDAY | JULY 27
9:30 a.m. 1152 15th St. NW. Economic levers of U.S. policy toward North Korea. cnas.org
12:30 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Luncheon with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. press.org
