MATTIS IN ASIA: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is in Manila, first stop on a week-long trip that begins with today’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministerial, and ends with a visit to South Korea, for the 49th annual Security Consultative Meeting. Midweek, Mattis stops in Thailand to represent the U.S. at the Royal Cremation Rites of late King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Mattis talked to reporters on the long flight over, but as is his preference, made most of his comments off-the-record, saving the journalists the task of filing any lengthy nuance stories from whatever insights they gleaned from the defense chief. Mattis said that while in the Philippines for the ASEAN meeting, he would be taking part in a trilateral meeting with South Korea and Japan about North Korea’s unbridled nuclear program. “The message is the same one as China, Russia, France, the United States, and all the international community has been directing, to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula,” Mattis said before moving the conversation off the record. “There is only one country with nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. The U.N. Security Council’s unanimous resolution gives a pretty good idea how the international community looks at it.”
‘SO PREPARED’: In part two on an interview with the Fox Business Network that aired this morning, President Trump said the United States is ready for whatever happens with North Korea. “We are so prepared you wouldn’t believe,” Trump told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.
24-HOUR ALERT: For the first time since the Cold War ended, the Air Force is preparing to put its nuclear-armed B-52 bombers back on 24-hour alert status should the order come in. “This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, told Defense One. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.” The official alert order has not yet been given.
TILLERSON IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is also traveling this week, heading to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, India and Switzerland. In Doha yesterday, Tillerson downplayed the tension between Iraq’s central government and Kurdish leaders in the north, as Iraqi forces reassert control of territory lost to the Islamic State in 2014 and liberated by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. “A lot of this movement that you’re watching and reporting on is really the Peshmerga forces repositioning to locations that they were prior to that fighting and Iraqi forces needing to relocate to locations prior to the fighting as well, and respect what have been the agreed-upon boundaries between the autonomous Kurdistan region and the rest of Iraq,” Tillerson said.
On his first stop in Saudi Arabia, Tillerson had a pointed message to Iran, which has been backing some local militias known as “popular mobilization units.” Those fighters have been observed moving into some of the areas recently vacated by the Kurds. “Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home,” Tillerson said in Riyadh. “Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control of areas that had been overtaken by ISIS and Daesh that have now been liberated, allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their lives with the help of their neighbors.”
TRUMP TAKES CREDIT FOR RAQQA: Trump celebrated the recapture of the Islamic State’s last major stronghold Saturday as a “critical breakthrough” in the campaign against the terrorist group. “With the liberation of ISIS’s capital and the vast majority of its territory, the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight,” the president said in a White House statement.
“One of my core campaign promises to the American people was to defeat ISIS and to counter the spread of hateful ideology,” Trump said. “That is why, in the first days of my Administration, I issued orders to give our commanders and troops on the ground the full authorities to achieve this mission. As a result, ISIS strongholds in Mosul and Raqqah have fallen. We have made, alongside our coalition partners, more progress against these evil terrorists in the past several months than in the past several years.”
THE FIGHT AGAINST ISIS: It’s important to keep in mind that while ISIS is losing, it is not yet defeated. The last stand in Syria will be the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where 6,000 fighters still operate. The fall of ISIS’ erstwhile capital of Raqqa does mark the coup de grâce. “It’s a very important success,” said retired Gen. David Petraeus on ABC yesterday. “The sooner ISIS could be shown to be a loser is the sooner it’s not as effective in recruiting, in proselytizing and encouraging, inspiring and so forth. And that is now very much the case.”
NIGER QUESTIONS MOUNT: If you were taken by surprise by the news that the U.S. has a significant presence of troops in Niger, more than in Syria for instance, you were in good company. “I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC yesterday. “John McCain is right to tell the military, because this is an endless war without boundaries, no limitation on time and geography, ‘You got to tell us more,’ and he’s right to say that.”
Graham, McCain and many other members of Congress are clamoring for more clarity and what the U.S. mission in Niger is all about, and what went wrong Oct. 4 when four U.S. troops were killed, two others wounded in an ambush, in an area of Southwest Niger, where they apparently expected no enemy contact.
Was it a “massive intelligence failure” as NBC news quoted an unnamed congressional aides as saying? Did the lightly armed convoy of about 50 Nigerien and American soldiers give chase to Islamic insurgents on motorcycles, as the New York Times reports? Should there have been a drone keeping watch over the soldiers, and a quick reaction force on stand by?
Graham said those unanswered question are behind McCain’s frustration, and what prompted Mattis to meet personally with McCain and Graham Friday. “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” Graham said. “So, John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question why we were there. We’ll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won’t find out about it in the paper.”
After a brief closed-door meeting with McCain in his Capitol Hill office, Mattis emerged to say, “We can do better at communication. We can always improve on communication and that’s exactly what we will do.” After a longer meeting with Graham in his office down the hall, the senator said grimly, “The war is headed to Africa.”
A NEW AUMF DEBATE: Graham said expanded counter-terrorism operations, beyond Iraq and Syria, will fuel a new debate on war authorizations. Mattis and Tillerson are scheduled to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Monday about a new authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF. Congress has not authorized war since 2002, though the debate has been simmering for years, and calls for a new war vote could be reignited if the Trump administration continues to intensify military operations in Africa and elsewhere. It has already stepped up the air campaign in Afghanistan and Trump eased regulations on strikes in Yemen and Somalia earlier in the year. “There’ll be a lot of members of Congress who’ll say, ‘Well, wait a minute, if you can go anywhere you want to go and start killing people, you know, anybody you want to kill, then we need to rein you [the administration] in,’ and that’s not the way it works,” Graham said. If Congress does not like how the president is wielding the military, it can vote to defund the operations, he said.
Good Monday 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.
HAPPENING TODAY: The sentencing hearing for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is set for today in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Bergdahl, in a surprise move, pleaded guilty last week to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. His fate now lies in the hands of a military judge, who could sentence him to life in prison, or decide his five years of brutal captivity at the hands of the Taliban is punishment enough. Bergdahl walked away from his post in Afghanistan in 2009. He was released in 2014, after President Barack Obama traded five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo for his freedom. The Army says no one died in the search for Bergdahl, but at the sentencing, testimony is expected from at least one military member who was seriously wounded in the search.
Q3 EARNINGS: The top five defense giants release their third quarter earnings this week:
- Lockheed Martin, Tuesday, 11 a.m.
- General Dynamics, Wednesday, 9 a.m.
- Boeing, Wednesday, 10:30 a.m.
- Northrop Grumman, Wednesday, noon
- Raytheon, Thursday, 7 a.m.
WHITE HOUSE PLAYED CATCH-UP: Trump’s claim to have called “virtually” every Gold Star family during his tenure prompted the White House to hastily assemble a list of the fallen to make sure the assertion was correct. An internal Defense Department email shows that the White House team reacted to Trump’s comment by asking for a list of “Condolence Letters Since 20 January 2017” from the Pentagon “ASAP.” The scramble came amid questions about why Trump delayed commenting publicly on the death of the four soldiers in Niger.
“The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy,” according to Roll Call, which obtained the email.
LATE LETTERS: The families of three sailors killed in August say they received White House condolence letters last week, days after Trump claimed on Monday to outperform his predecessors in making condolence calls. The three men were among 10 sailors to die aboard the USS John S. McCain when the destroyer collided with a commercial ship near Singapore on Aug. 21.
“Honestly, I feel the letter is reactionary to the media storm brewing over how these things have been handled,” Timothy Eckels Sr., whose son Timothy Jr. died in the incident, told The Atlantic. Eckels said he received the letter Friday, but that it was dated Wednesday.
CARTER RAISES HIS HAND: Former President Jimmy Carter says he’s willing to travel to North Korea as an envoy, if asked by Trump, though he’s frightened by the situation and questions China’s influence on the belligerent hermit nation. “I would go, yes,” when asked by the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. The 93-year-old said he has spoken to national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster about it, but says he hasn’t received the go-ahead. “I told him that I was available if they ever need me,” Carter said.
In 1994, Carter’s mission to Pyongyang averted a strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities, and led to the framework agreement that North Korea violated as it continued to pursue nuclear weapons. Many believe Carter’s diplomacy cost the the U.S. its best chance of stopping North Korea before it gained a real nuclear capability.
AWOL AFGHANS: More than 150 Afghan troops that were in the United States for training have gone absent without leave, or AWOL, since 2006, according to a new audit from the Pentagon. “[T]he limited vetting of Afghan trainees, and the restrictions of the investigatory and asylum processes, may pose a security risk to the United States when trainees go AWOL,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report said.
Most of those who abandoned their posts did so in three different years that were marked by particularly high levels of violence, the report said. Some reported that their families had been threatened by the Taliban after they left for the U.S.
But the disappearances also reveal a weakness in how federal officials oversee the training program, the report suggested. “[I]ssues with interagency coordination have hindered investigatory efforts to locate AWOL trainees,” the inspector general found.
GO AHEAD, EUROPE: Trump doesn’t plan to interfere with European investment in Iran, according to Tillerson. “The president’s been pretty clear that it’s not his intent to interfere with business deals that the Europeans may have under way with Iran,” Tillerson told the Wall Street Journal. “He’s said it clearly: ‘That’s fine. You guys do what you want to do.'”
That commitment could be a key factor in the maintenance of the Iran nuclear deal, contrary to Trump’s stated policy preferences. The president called for a series of new restrictions on the regime’s aggression, in a denunciation of the pact that flew in the face of European preferences. But Trump is apparently stopping short of threatening to impose sanctions that curtail potential investments.
THE RUNDOWN
AP: U.S.-backed forces take Syria’s largest oil field from IS
Stars and Stripes: THAAD now fully integrated into air defenses for South Korea
Reuters: Abe to push reform of Japan’s pacifist constitution after election win
Task and Purpose: How the media is making the situation in Niger worse
Defense News: Navy likely to be passed over for top Pacific Command spot
USA Today: Nuclear war: What is ‘nuclear winter,’ and how likely is it?
Wall Street Journal: Tillerson looks to contain Iran’s influence in Iraq
Defense News: Boiling point: McCain frustrations with Mattis, McMaster go public
New York Times: A newly assertive C.I.A. expands its Taliban hunt in Afghanistan
Washington Post: Those who fight our wars don’t write ‘blank checks’ to America. The soldiers slain in Niger knew that.
USNI News: Destroyer USS John S. McCain developed hull crack in transit on heavy lift vessel; Ship routed to Philippines for inspection
Daily Beast: The most adorable nuclear apocalypse ever
Calendar
MONDAY | OCT. 23
12 p.m. 6715 Commerce St. 20th Annual Systems Engineering Conference with Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags, head of Naval Air Systems Command. ndia.org
TUESDAY | OCT. 24
7:45 a.m. 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd. Precision Strike Technology Symposium with Vice Adm. Mat Winter, F-35 program executive officer, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, vice chief of staff of the Air Force. ndia.org
8 a.m. 100 Westgate Circle. 22nd Annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference with Lt. Gen. Bob Hedelund, commanding general of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, and Vice Adm. Kevin Scott, director of Joint Staff force development. ndia.org
11 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Securing democracy: The history of foreign election interference. csis.org
WEDNESDAY | OCT. 25
8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of the Nato Military Committee. centermediasecurity.org
10 a.m. Rayburn 2172. Next steps after the president’s Iran decision. foreignaffairs.house.gov
10:30 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Book discussion of “Vets and Pets: Wounded Warriors and the Animals that Help Them Heal” with authors Kevin Ferris and Dava Guerin. heritage.org
5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Book launch of “Crashback, The Power Clash Between the U.S. and China in the Pacific” with author Michael Fabey. csis.org
THURSDAY | OCT. 26
8:15 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. Documentary screening and discussion of “Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS.” cfr.org
9:30 a.m. 529 14th St. NW. The parallel gulag: North Korea’s “an-jeon-bu” prison camps. press.org
4 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Redeploying U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea with Joon-Pyo Hong, chairman of the Liberty Korea Party and Congressional Delegation. press.org
FRIDAY | OCT. 27
8 a.m. 300 1st St. SE. Mitchell space breakfast series: U.S. allies in space with Air Vice-Marshal ‘Rocky’ Rochelle, of the Royal Air Force, and Wing Commander Steven Henry, Australian exchange officer at the Defense Department. michellaerospacepower.org
2 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Inclusion in combat and security: A book event with Maj. M.J. Hegar. wilsoncenter.org
MONDAY | OCT. 30
5701 Marinelli Rd. IPPM: Future dimensions of integration. ndia.org
9:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Iraqi public opinion on the rise, fall and future of ISIS. csis.org
2 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Russia’s demography: The basis for a prosperous future? atlanticcouncil.org
5 p.m. Dirksen 419. The administration perspective on the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. foreign.senate.gov
5:30 p.m. 1667 K St. NW. Book talk on “Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015.” csbaonline.org
