Questions mount over Trump’s Syria strategy

Syria dominated the G-7 meeting of the world’s seven largest economies. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said the message Tillerson should take to Moscow is that it’s time to get on the right side of history. “Do they want to stick with a toxic regime, do they want to be eternally associated with a guy who gases his own people or do they want to work with the Americans and the rest of the G-7 and indeed many other countries for a new future for Syria,” Johnson said.

NO PUTIN FOR YOU: One sign Russia won’t be very receptive to the U.S. diplomatic entreaties is the announcement from the Kremlin that Vladimir Putin won’t be making time to meet with Tillerson, who had easy access to the Russian president back when Tillerson was an oil executive. “We have not announced any such meetings and right now there is no meeting with Tillerson in the president’s diary,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday, per Reuters. Instead, Tillerson will match wits with Russia’s wily veteran foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

NERVOUS DEMOCRATS: “I have low expectations for this meeting,” said Sen. Chris Murphy on MSNBC yesterday. “Our focus should be on stopping the bloodshed inside Syria. And if that means that Assad has to stay as a transitional figure, well, that may have to be on the table.”  The Connecticut Democrat said, “I just hope that the administration keeps this up and then comes to Congress and works with us on a Russia sanctions bill that will give us more leverage with them when we’re ultimately trying to decide the fate of Syria, the fate of Ukraine, trying to work together with them on a host of other problems in the region.”

Over on CNN, Rep. Ted Leiu, one of Trump’s unwavering critics, was blasting the administration. “I can tell you the Trump administration has no strategy. Two weeks ago they signaled they were OK with Assad in power. Last week he attacks Assad. This week his advisers give conflicting signals on whether they want regime change or not. We cannot have this strategic confusion coming out of the White House.” Leiu, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also questioned the value of the U.S. cruise missile attack. “I don’t know because I don’t know what the purpose of that strike was. Their base was up and running a day after those cruise missiles landed,” Lieu said.

ABOUT THAT AIRFIELD: The White House dismissed reports from Syria that the Shayrat airfield was back in business, saying that video showing a pair of Syrian fighters taking off was a P.R. stunt. “They took some pre-fueled planes, pushed them over,” to make it look as though  operations were unimpaired, said White House press secretary Sean Spicer. “The bottom line is their fueling capability’s been taken out, their radar capability was taken out and over 20 percent of their fixed-wing aircraft from their entire air force was taken out. Their ability to operate successfully out of that airbase is gone,” Spicer said. “That’s a huge success.”

Shortly after Spicer’s comments at his regular White House briefing, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis issued a statement confirming that reflected the official Pentagon post-strike assessment. “The Syrian government has lost the ability to refuel or rearm aircraft at Shayrat airfield and at this point, use of the runway is of idle military interest,” Mattis said. “The Syrian government would be ill-advised ever again to use chemical weapons.”

SPICER’S SLIP UP: There was hours-long confusion yesterday when it appeared Spicer was drawing a new red line, warning Syria not to use barrel bombs (which are no chemical weapons), or face a U.S. military response. “The sight of people being gassed and blown away by barrel bombs ensures that if we see this kind of action again, we hold open the possibility of future action,” Spicer said. That sent White House and Pentagon officials scrambling to determine whether there was a policy change they hadn’t been told about. The White House later walked the statement back, saying Spicer misspoke and that U.S. policy hasn’t changed.

RUSSIA’S COMPLICITY: Tillerson is expected to confront Moscow over its failure to live up to its 2013 pledge to guarantee Assad gave up all his chemical weapons, but he is not expected to accuse Russia of being directly complicit in the April 4 attack that killed as many as 100 Syrian civilians with a deadly nerve agent. Yesterday, the White House pushed back against an Associated Press report that said the administration believes Russia knew about the attack ahead of time. “At this time, there is no U.S. Intelligence Community consensus that Russia had foreknowledge of the Syrian chemical attack,” a senior administration official said. The AP report, filed Monday afternoon, cited a “senior U.S. official” who said a drone operated by Russia flew over a hospital as victims of the chemical attack rushed there to get treatment. That hospital was later bombed in what the U.S. believes was an attempt to cover up the fact that chemical weapons had been used. Those basic facts were laid out Friday by two military officials briefing reporters at the Pentagon. But they stopped short of saying Russia was involved in any way.

Good Tuesday 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.

NORTH KOREA UNDETERRED: North Korea says it’s not afraid of the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group now operating in waters off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast. “We will hold the U.S. wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” the foreign ministry said yesterday. “This goes to prove that the U.S. reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase of its scenario,” said a statement reported by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. “If the U.S. dares opt for a military action, crying out for ‘preemptive attack’ and ‘removal of the headquarters,’ the DPRK is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.” The formal name of North Korea is, without any recognition of irony, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” or DPRK.

Lieu, who faulted Trump for a lack of strategy on Syria, leveled the same charge regarding Korea. “We don’t know what the president is thinking, and we can’t have a foreign policy based on keep them guessing with a country that has nuclear weapons,” Lieu said on CNN. “North Korea is very different than Syria. Not only do they have nukes, they can rain artillery down on South Korea, on our troops in South Korea and kill millions of people in the Korean Peninsula if there is a miscalculation.”

U.S., BRITISH TROOPS IN COMBAT: Technically they are advisers, but in reality U.S. troops in Syria are serving in an active combat zone, and are never far from of danger. The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that U.S. special operations forces and some British commandos were part of a fierce firefight Saturday, when ISIS launched a coordinated attack on a base where the coalition troops were assisting “partner forces,” in battling ISIS. The attack on the An Tank Garrison in southern Syria included an explosives-laden truck, and 20 to 30 ISIS fighters, some armed with suicide vests. Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said U.S. troops called in airstrikes to destroy the truck bomb, and engaged in direct fire to help repel the attacks. “Ultimately the attackers were either killed, defeated or chased off,” Thomas said. Three partner fighters were killed, but U.S. and British forces suffered no casualties.

SOLDIER KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN IDENTIFIED: The Pentagon has identified Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Md., as the special operations soldier killed in Afghanistan over the weekend while fighting an affiliate of the Islamic State group. De Alencar was mortally wounded Saturday when his unit became involved in a gun battle with ISIS-Khorasan, which now operates in Afghanistan where the United States has been battling the Taliban since 2001.

PRESSURE TO END BOEING DEAL: Trump should cancel airplane sales to Iranian airlines that facilitate terrorism, a pair of Republican lawmakers urged Monday. “Iran’s commercial airlines have American blood on their hands,” Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Peter Roskam wrote in a letter to Trump. A government decision to block the aircraft sales would provoke an uproar at home and abroad. It would cost Boeing, which has inked a pair of deals to sell 110 planes to Iran-based airlines, about $20 billion.

STILL GROUNDED: The Navy had to ground its T-45C training jets for another week due to problems with the oxygen system that caused a pilot boycott, but said Monday it plans to unveil a plan to fix the aircraft by Friday. Hundreds of pilots, including Vice President Mike Pence’s son, refused to fly the trainers because they did not feel safe in the cockpit. The Navy reacted to reports of hypoxia by originally halting flight operations for three days. But Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, called it a “vexing” problem and the grounding was extended for another week. Cmdr. Jeannie Groeneveld, Navy spokeswoman, said the extension is expected to last until Friday, when the service will announce what the “road ahead” will be for the aircraft. Teams at Naval Air Systems Command are poring over two of the aircraft looking for a fix.

THE STRIKE WAS POPULAR: More than half of Americans think Trump did the right thing by ordering missile strikes on a Syrian air base following a chemical weapons attack last week. A CBS News poll showed 57 percent of Americans approve of the strike, but only 18 percent of those polled want to see the strikes followed up with the deployment of American ground troops. The poll also said 70 percent of people want Trump to go to Congress for approval before taking further military action in Syria.

HIGH-VALUE DIPLOMACY: Call it a 21st century Marshall Plan, or a beachhead against the Trump administration. Sen. Chris Murphy unveiled a proposal Monday to double the U.S. foreign affairs budget. Murphy argued at the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States must focus more on diplomacy and development aid if it wants to solve serious problems such as the Syrian civil war, global terrorism and pandemics.

But the Connecticut Democrat also admitted he is not naive enough to think Congress is prepared to pass a $131 billion boost for foreign affairs over five years, especially when Trump has proposed slashing the State Department budget by nearly 30 percent to pay for what Murphy called a “bigger Army and a bigger moat.” Instead, he sees his proposal, laid out in a detailed report, as a marker for Democrats to expand the debate far to the left. “We need to be on offense,” Murphy said.

A MAN OF FEW WORDS: Tillerson warned of U.S. retaliation against war criminals while visiting a memorial to Italian victims of the Nazis, Joel Gehrke reports. “We remember the events of August 12th, 1944, that occurred in Sant’Anna and we re-dedicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world. This place will serve as an inspiration to us all.” That’s not a partial quote from Tillerson, those were his entire remarks, as reported by the State Department. Tillerson was speaking as part of a wreath-laying ceremony at Sant’Anna di Stazzema, at the scene of a massacre perpetrated by the Waffen-SS in 1944.

THE RUNDOWN

Washington Post: The Trump doctrine sounds suspiciously like the Bush doctrine

New York Times: Move of U.S. warships shows Trump has few options on North Korea

USA Today: What will it take for Putin to dump Assad?

CNN: Russia could soon control a U.S. oil company

Roll Call: Stop-loss an option for Air Force to keep departing pilots

War on the Rocks: Doubling down on America’s misadventure in Yemen

Washington Post: U.S. military struggles to defend air operations in war against militants

UPI Security News: U.S. Air Force, Lockheed Martin demo unmanned F-16

Defense & Aerospace Report: Tomahawk missile strikes on Syrian airfield and their potential repercussions for the US defense budget

Wall Street Journal: Suicide bomber kills at least five soldiers in Somali military camp

Task and Purpose: SEAL’s book on Bin Laden killing reveals why photos of the body were never released

Associated Press: Trump to sell attack planes to Nigeria for Boko Haram fight

USNI News: Russia sends more warships toward Syria following U.S. Tomahawk strikes

Washington Post Fact Check: Susan Rice’s claim that Obama got Syria to ‘verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile’

Smithsonian.com: Why Is the Pentagon a Pentagon?

Calendar

TUESDAY | APRIL 11

8 a.m. 2101 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 700. The quarterly procurement division meeting with speakers and panelists on the defense industrial base, challenges to acquisition and procurement. ndia.org

11 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A genealogy of Russophobia in America. wilsoncenter.org

WEDNESDAY | APRIL 12

9:30 a.m. 1501 Lee Highway. A Discussion with Lt. Gen. Mark Nowland, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Air Force, about the service and the future force. mitchellaerospacepower.org

10 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book launch for Al-Qaeda’s Revenge: The 2004 Madrid Train Bombings. wilsoncenter.org

10 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A look at what’s next for Afghanistan-Pakistan relations with Daud Khattak, senior editor at Radio Free Europe, Omar Samad, the former Afghan ambassador to France, and Joshua White, associate professor of practice and fellow at Johns Hopkins University. wilsoncenter.org

11 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, talks about rebuilding his service branch. heritage.org

12 p.m. 2101 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 700. David Hoffman, deputy general counsel of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, speaks at a quarterly procurement division meeting. ndia.org

6 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. Perspectives on Russia from Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Alexander R. Vershbow, distinguished fellow with the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, and Rita Hauser, president of the Hauser Foundation. cfr.org

THURSDAY | APRIL 13

7:30 a.m. 1401 Lee Highway. Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks at an association breakfast. afa.org

8:30 a.m. 1777 F St. NW. A series of morning panels on the origins of modern Russia in the collapse of the Soviet Union, current trends in the country today and the future of foreign policy toward Moscow. cfr.org

12:30 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW, 12th Floor. Former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway and a panel discuss advanced energy innovation and national security. atlanticcouncil.org

3:30 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book launch for Konrad Wolf’s But I Saw It Myself, This is the War: War Diary and Letters, 1942-1945. wilsoncenter.org

TUESDAY | APRIL 18

7 a.m. 300 5th Ave. SW. The National Defense Industrial Association kicks off its three-day science and engineering technology conference. ndia.org

6:30 p.m. D.C. premiere screening of Danger Close film and Q&A with war reporter Alex Quade. press.org