AFGHANISTAN STRATEGY DECIDED: President Trump plans to spell out his decision on how to break the stalemate in Afghanistan in a 9 p.m. EDT television address at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va, with an audience of U.S. troops. Trump settled on an option Friday, after consultation with more than 20 members of his national security team at the presidential retreat at Camp David. With fired White House chief strategist Steve Bannon out of the picture, the president is expected to go along with the consensus recommendation to augment the current force of military trainers and advisers, which includes 8,400 U.S. troops, with up to 4,000 additional trainers from the U.S. and other NATO countries. Bannon reportedly favored an alternative approach that would phase out the U.S. troop presence and replace them with private security personnel.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking to reporters en route to Jordan, said that while he has tactical authority to adjust troop levels in Afghanistan, he has been reluctant to make any major changes until the overarching strategy was settled. “I was not willing to make significant troop lifts until we made certain we knew what was the strategy, what was the commitment going in,” Mattis said. “[Trump] wants to be the one to announce it to the American people, so I’ll stand silent until then. … Once he announces what the strategy is, we can get more precise on Afghanistan troop levels.”
WHAT A CONCEPT: The way the Afghan strategy announcement is being handled is a radical departure from the president’s past practice of waking up in the morning and blurting out his decision in a tweet or series of tweets. Instead, his post-meeting tweets have been notably circumspect. “Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan,” Trump tweeted Friday. The new, more disciplined approach has the fingerprints of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly all over it.
Mattis described the process of settling on the best strategy as a rigorous one involving everyone from the Treasury secretary to the Office of Management and Budget director, following months of sharpening the options to answer Trump’s concerns. “He really did come in with very different courses of action,” Mattis told reporters on his plane. “I think he now needs the weekend to collect his thoughts about how he’s going to explain it to the American people.”
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT TROOPS: Mattis has been talking for months about how the strategy needs to extend beyond the borders of Afghanistan, in particular putting pressure on Pakistan to stop allowing the Taliban to have safe havens across the border, and to do more to eliminate al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists.
But there is another major component to the strategy, namely taking the gloves off in the air campaign. U.S. commanders have been restricted in how much they can use airstrikes to back up Afghan forces on the ground. In Iraq and Syria, coalition air support has been the decisive factor in enabling partner forces to prevail when assaulting even the most heavily fortified defenses. Mattis has testified before Congress that he wants to unleash the full fury of U.S. airpower to help turn the tide of battle.
MATTIS IN THE REGION: Mattis is making stops in Jordan, Turkey and Ukraine this week, with different priorities to address in each country. In Jordan, he meets with King Abdullah and the new chief of defense. In Turkey, Mattis will address continuing concerns about the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds. “We’ve got disagreement on who we’re working with. You all know that. We’ve worked through those,” Mattis said. “I also want to better understand and help address their legitimate security interests, get a deeper understanding there.” And in Ukraine, Mattis will help mark the country’s Independence Day, and meet with President Petro Poroshenko to provide reassurance of continued U.S. support.
TAL AFAR OFFENSIVE: Mattis’ visit to the region comes as the government of Iraq has announced the latest offensive against ISIS, this time to liberate Tal Afar, where an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 Iraqis remain under the terror group’s brutal rule. The U.S.-led coalition said, as with the Mosul campaign, it will assist by providing equipment, training, intelligence, precision fires and combat advice.
Asked how long the liberation might take, Mattis gave a classic Mattis response. “When the young guys go into the fight, don’t say it’s going to be easy or hard. Don’t say it’s going to be fast or slow. Just go silent,” Mattis said. “People will speak with gravelly voices and be paid a lot of money to speak on television screens about how it’s going to go. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re horribly wrong. I’d prefer just to let the reality come home. There’s nothing to be gained by forecasting something that’s fundamentally unpredictable.”
NOT AGAIN: Just two months after the USS Fitzgerald collided at sea with a commercial container ship, killing seven sailors, its sister ship in the 7th Fleet, the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain, has suffered a similar fate, colliding with an oil tanker east of the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, and leaving 10 sailors missing and feared dead. The USS John S. McCain, named for the father and grandfather of Sen. John McCain, managed to limp back to the port at Changi Naval Base under its own power, but television images showed the warship with a gaping hole in its portside hull aft. The accident happened at 6:24 a.m. Japan time, and resulted in flooding to crew berthing compartments as well as machinery and communications rooms. Damage control efforts by the crew halted further flooding. An extensive air and sea search remains underway for possible survivors. The commercial oil and chemical tanker ship was identified as the Alnic MC, a 600-foot long Liberian-flagged ship with a gross tonnage of 30,000.
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 U.S. and South Korea begin their annual joint military exercises to practice the defense of the South from an invasion from the North. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise runs until Aug. 31, and has a few thousand fewer U.S. troops than last year, roughly 17,500, about 3,000 of which are coming from outside the peninsula. The U.S. denies it has scaled back the exercise to avoid provoking Kim Jong Un, but this year’s maneuvers are mostly behind closed doors, what’s known as a “command post” exercise, as opposed to thousands of troops landing on a beach. “It will mostly be officers and NCOs hunched over computers,” Mattis told the reporters traveling with him. “Sometimes it’s better to leave [the troops] in their fundamental training mode rather than being out on the ground waiting for orders as staffs are learning how to work together. Meanwhile, they’re sharpening their combat skills while the staffs are sharpening integration skills.”
MERCILESS STRIKE: North Korea denounces the annual exercises every year, claiming they are a rehearsal for an attack on the regime, and this year is no different. According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea is on “high alert, fully ready to contain the enemies,” and threatening a missile strike in retaliation if it should detect “even a slight sign of the ‘preventive war’ ” an apparent reference to any preemptive strike. “The U.S. should properly face up to the reality, though belatedly,” a statement said. “The DPRK is the strongest possessor of ICBM capable of striking the U.S. mainland from anywhere and anytime as it pleases. Neither Guam nor Hawaii nor the U.S. mainland can dodge the merciless strike of the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army.”
Mattis brushed aside the threats as more empty bluster. “North Korea knows this is fully defensive. Whatever they may say for public consumption, they know this is a defensive exercise. It’s been going on, you know, for decades.”
WOULD TRUMP NEED PERMISSION? While Trump has threatened the North with “fire and fury,” and said military solutions are “locked and loaded,” experts and the president of South Korea say Trump can’t launch a strike against North Korea without agreement from the South. It all goes back to the U.S.-ROK treaty signed in 1953, which requires both presidents sign off on military action. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has assured his people, who would bear the brunt of any war on the peninsula, that he won’t sign off on any preemptive strike.
“I am saying any military action to be taken on the Korean Peninsula requires South Korea’s consent unless it is taken outside the peninsula,” Moon said last week in a nationwide televised news conference. “This is a firm agreement between South Korea and the United States. The people can be assured that there will be no war,” Moon said. Of course, if North Korea directly attacks the U.S., all bets are off. Or as Mattis said, “It’s game on.”
AGAINST THE TRANS BAN: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is condemning Trump’s announced ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military, saying it sends a message that “fosters and encourages prejudice.”
“The president’s mere announcement of a ban on transgender military service harms all Americans by sending a message that fosters and encourages prejudice, inconsistent with our core national value,” the bipartisan federal agency said in an announcement Friday. “If implemented, the ban would further harm Americans, and weaken our defense, by enshrining unequal treatment of Americans based on rank stereotype.” The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a fact-finding agency created in 1957 to advise the White House and Congress, said it opposed the transgender ban by majority vote, and honored the “thousands of transgender troops” who currently serve and who previously served. “These military men and women honor our country and defend all its citizens with its service,” the commission said.
DIA CHIEF’S STRONG WORDS: Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, issued an anti-hate message to his agency’s workforce on Friday urging them to “never be silent” in “the face of violence and intolerance.” In a lengthy note titled “Hate is Not Easily Conquered,” Stewart spoke of the ongoing quest to complete the Constitution’s plan for “a more perfect Union,” even as the country has been wracked with tension following this month’s violence in Charlottesville, Va. “In these moments, filled with suspicion towards our own neighbors, we must remember one thing: we are all Americans,” Stewart said.
GENERALS SHOULD STAY: Jeh Johnson, homeland security secretary under former President Barack Obama, is imploring the military figures serving in the White House to put “country first” and remain in the Trump administration. “There’s been a lot of talk this week about people resigning from the White House, whether people should resign from the White House,” Johnson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Frankly, if John Kelly, my friend John Kelly or my friend Jim Mattis came to me and said, ‘I’m thinking about resigning from this White House, I’d say, ‘absolutely not.’ ”
Johnson added national security adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army three-star general, and White House chief of staff Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, along with Mattis, had to stay “to right the ship.”
ELEVATING CYBER: On Friday, President Trump announced he is elevating U.S. Cyber Command to a unified combatant command, on par with other major commands, such as the Central, European, Northern and Pacific Commands. The move is designed to boost cyberspace operations and make it easier to coordinate with allies to deter cybersecurity threats.
But it fell to the Pentagon to explain little would change until a new four-star Cyber Command chief is nominated, and a decision is made to separate the command from the National Security Agency. For now, Adm. Mike Rogers, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command will also remain director of the NSA, in a “dual hat,” arrangement, but as cyber commander will report directly to the president. Under a requirement inserted in the National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon must certify to Congress that missions of the two commands wouldn’t be “negatively impacted” before they can be separated.
It’s unclear if Rogers would head the new command, remain at NSA, or be replaced. “The president has simply asked for the secretary’s recommendation on a nomination,” said Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security on Friday. “The decision on who that individual will be has not been made.”
USS INDIANAPOLIS FOUND: Civilian researchers say they have uncovered the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis, a World War II cruiser. A Japanese submarine torpedoed the Indianapolis early in the morning of July 30, 1945. Approximately 800 of the 1,196 sailors and Marines survived the ship’s initial sinking. But only 316 people survived the dehydration, drowning, and shark attacks that ensued over the subsequent four to five days they spent stuck in the water. An expedition crew found the wreckage at 5,500 meters below the surface on the floor of the North Pacific Ocean, according to the Navy.
THE RUNDOWN
Military Times: Top Pentagon posts 74 percent vacant as Congress returns
AP: US Commander In Afghanistan Launches Special Ops Corps
Star Advertiser: Search for missing aviators extends to Kauai shoreline
Wall Street Journal: Operations against Islamic State spotlight competing U.S. priorities
Reuters: Syria’s Assad Says Western Plots Against Him Foiled But War Not Yet Won
USA Today: 100 gas tanks: Extremists in Spain planned massive attack
Task and Purpose: The Navy is getting a ‘game-changing’ upgrade that could turn the tables on China and Russia
Reuters: Merkel attacks Turkey’s ‘misuse’ of Interpol warrants
Army Times: Just add water: Army researchers discover quicker, safer way to use hydrogen as energy
Military.com: Trump approves Global War On Terrorism memorial in DC
Calendar
MONDAY | AUG. 21
1 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Options and ways to respond to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. atlanticcouncil.org
WEDNESDAY | AUG. 23
12:30 p.m. 1152 15th St. NW. Reddit ‘ask me anything’ on artificial intelligence and global security. cnas.org
THURSDAY | AUG. 24
1:30 p.m. 1300 Wilson Blvd. PSA Captains of Industry roundtable lunch with Rear Adm. David Hahn, chief of naval research and director of innovation, technology requirements, and test and evaluation. ndia.org
