TRUMP TALKS TERRORISM: President-elect Trump meets today with his national security adviser-designate retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The meeting at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago estate comes one day after Flynn conferred with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Washington, along with other national security nominees, including his nominees for State, Defense, and DHS: Rex Tillerson, and retired Gens. James Mattis and John Kelly.
While Trump took some flak for immediately pointing the finger at radical Islamic terrorism for the Christmas market attack in Germany, and the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey, the Islamic State Tuesday claimed credit for inspiring the Berlin truck attack, in which 12 people were killed and almost 50 injured when a truck plowed through the holiday crowd. A massive manhunt is underway in Germany, where authorities admitted yesterday they had the wrong suspect in custody, and the attacker is still at large. German police say they have a number of strong leads.
ANGUS’ BEEF: Among critics who accused Trump of jumping the gun, Independent Sen. Angus King said Trump’s blame of radical Islamic terrorism may make things worse rather than help, Kyle Feldscher writes. “We don’t really know the facts so it’s premature to come to a conclusion,” King said. “It appears the attack in Turkey on the Russian ambassador wasn’t a religious attack but was a political one, revenge for what’s going on in Aleppo.” He added, “To say they’re both jihadist attacks just doesn’t appear to be correct.”
The Islamic State claim was easy to make and hard to verify. The Berlin attacker was dubbed a “soldier of the Islamic State” in the Amaq News Agency, an Islamic State propaganda outlet, according to SITE Intel Group. New York Times’ Rukmini Callimachi pointed out that the statement pretty much amounts to a template that ISIS sends out after a tragedy. “This is boilerplate ISIS,” she said.
WOOLSEY’S TAKE: A former CIA director said Tuesday that the United States will not be able to stop terror attacks from happening if “we’re just playing defense,” Meghana Kurup writes. “It’s as if we’re in [a] big, really important hockey game and we deploy our entire team as goalies,” James Woolsey said on Fox News, just hours after the truck attack in Berlin. “We’re going to lose. We can try to catch people after the fact, we can try to by vetting, screen people out. But if we keep going the way we’re going, we’re going to have continual terrorist attacks of major proportions,” said Woolsey, who is Trump’s senior adviser on national security.
EUROPE TRAVEL ADVISORY: Americans traveling to Europe should be vigilant when in open-air areas with lots of people, a State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday, Kyle Feldscher reports. Speaking on CNN, Kirby said the terrorist attack in Berlin is a prime example of why people need to be extra cautious when traveling to Europe during the holiday season. No Americans are believed to have been harmed in the attack in western Berlin. “We don’t want to discourage people from traveling to Europe or elsewhere around the world,” Kirby said. “It’s just a matter of being alert and cognizant of your surroundings.”
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SHUT OUT IN SYRIA: Secretary of State John Kerry does not have a seat at the table, as diplomats from Russia, Iran and Turkey are meeting in Moscow to sort out Syria’s future, now that Syrian President Bashar Assad has defeated rebels in Aleppo and has the upper hand. Kerry has been reduced to complaining about Russia’s intervention, while the U.S. is basically sidelined watching the victors divide the spoils in the face of recent battlefield gains. Syria’s nearly six-year civil war won’t be over anytime soon, but as the Obama administration leaves office, it’s increasingly clear that the U.S., and the West, has lost any ability to influence events on the ground, and that Assad will continue to rule whatever is left of Syria, despite President Obama’s vow five years ago that Assad had to go.
Moscow insists the assassination of its ambassador to Turkey in Istanbul Monday will not affect the warming relations between Turkey and Russia. Turkish authorities identified the assassin as Mevlut Altintas, a member of Ankara’s riot police squad. Altintas shouted in Turkish about the Syrian city of Aleppo and also yelled “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”
KEEP THE HEAT ON PUTIN: The State Department said Tuesday it hopes Trump will keep sanctions that Obama imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Joel Gehrke reports. “We would hope that they would see the wisdom in keeping these sanctions and this pressure on Russia, because we have seen it have an effect,” Kirby told reporters. “But obviously, these are decisions they have to make and we also respect that process as well.” Obama isn’t waiting for Trump to be convinced. The Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions targeted at Russian officials and infrastructure companies, despite Tillerson’s belief that sanctions often fail to have their intended effect on foreign powers.
Predictably, Russia said new sanctions would damage relations between Washington and Moscow. On a conference call with reporters Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “We regret that Washington is continuing on this destructive path,” adding, “We believe this damages bilateral relations … Russia will take commensurate measures,” according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the State Department says Russia continues its war in Ukraine while the world’s attention is diverted by other crises. “On eastern Ukraine, the United States is deeply concerned with the recent spike of violence in eastern Ukraine,” said Kirby. “Over just the last two days, six Ukrainian service members have been killed and 33 wounded in a Russian separatist attempt to seize additional Ukrainian territory, the highest two-day casualty figure that we’ve seen since June of 2015.”
FULL SPEED ASTERN: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced late Monday night that a message will be released at 8 a.m. today announcing that the wildly unpopular decision to scrap Navy ratings is being reversed, after word leaked out on social media. The controversial move came from a study ordered by outgoing Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who touted the change as a way to help sailors get promoted and find jobs once they leave the service. Congrats, all you boatswain’s mates!
VA NAMES: Trump has added two new candidates to the mix for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Trump on Tuesday met with businessman and Vietnam veteran Luis Quinonez at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. The incoming Republican leader also met with Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove. Both, according to a report in Bloomberg News, are under consideration to discuss leading the troubled federal agency.
EMPTYING GITMO: We’ve reported before on Obama’s apparent strategy of leaving just a few dozen prisoners left in Guantánamo by the time exits the stage next month. The New York Times reports Congress is being informed this week that the administration plans to transfer 17 or 18 of the 59 remaining Gitmo detainees to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That would leave 41 or 42 prisoners in Guantánamo for Trump to deal with. Obama is hoping that the economics of keeping the prison camp open at $445 million a year will prompt Trump to reconsider his campaign vow keep the prison camp open and “load it up with some bad dudes.”
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: The Trump Transition teams says the president-elect will remain at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach all through the Christmas holiday, spending time with his family in between taking meetings. Pence is spending the Christmas holiday in his home state of Indiana.
GOODBYE MARK: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mark Thompson, who has covered national security and the military since 1979, and for Time magazine since 1994, announced his retirement on Twitter yesterday. Mark will be missed for his keen insight, and razor sharp sense of humor. His ability to cut through the smokescreen of Pentagon BS, and produce highly readable and informative copy made him the object of admiration and some professional jealousy. One of the very best.
THE RUNDOWN
Foreign Policy: Russia Missing from Trump’s Top Defense Priorities, According to DoD Memo
Wall Street Journal: Russia’s Rise In Mideast Creates Enemies
Defense One: How Did One Small Defense Firm Get a Seat at Trump’s Tech Summit?
Defense News: F-35 Chief: Loose Bracket Sparked Fire on Marine Corps Plane
Breaking Defense: F-35s Likely Heading To Europe In Summer 2017: SecAf James
Defense News: Boeing’s T-X Takes Its First Flight
Stars and Stripes: Bergdahl not on Obama’s December pardon list
USNI News: Old Treaties Called Into Question as Arctic Competition Increases
Wall Street Journal: Officials Say Aleppo Evacuations Could Be Finished Wednesday
Washington Post: When air power works, and when it doesn’t: A snapshot of U.S. operations against the Islamic State
Vox.com: China Just Returned A U.S. Navy Drone. Why’d They Take It In The First Place?
War on the Rocks: Joe Dunford’s holiday shopping list: 2016 edition
Calendar
D.C. is dark this week, but here’s a preview of what’s on deck in the New Year:
THURSDAY | JANUARY 5
3 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A panel of experts talks about the future of the Pakistani Taliban. wilsoncenter.org
FRIDAY | JANUARY 6
7 a.m. 1401 Lee Highway, Arlington, Va. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James speaks at an Air Force Association breakfast event. afa.org
TUESDAY | JANUARY 10
11 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Seth Jones, author of Waging Insurgent Warfare: Lessons from the Vietcong to the Islamic State, speaks at the Heritage Foundation. heritage.org
WEDNESDAY | JANUARY 11
9:30 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Officials from the Marine Corps discuss how science fiction has impacted the service’s ability to develop new technology. atlanticcouncil.org
3:30 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. The Atlantic Council releases a paper titled, “A Nonstate Strategy for Saving Cyberspace.” atlanticcouncil.org
