FACE-OFF IN HAMBURG: In a meeting that has all the anticipatory hype of a heavyweight title bout, President Trump squares off with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany today. Trump will have Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in his corner, and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov will back up Putin. But aside from translators, it will be just the four men in the room. The meeting is closed, of course, but set to get underway around 9:45 a.m. Washington time.
Given Trump’s remarks yesterday that he remains unconvinced about the extent of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. president, he’s not expected to confront Putin on the subject, despite calls from Democrats in Congress. (“I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries,” Trump said yesterday in Poland. “Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”) But Syria, Ukraine and terrorism are expected to be among the topics discussed, although the White House has said the president has no set agenda.
“I look forward to all meetings today with world leaders, including my meeting with Vladimir Putin. Much to discuss,” Trump tweeted this morning. “I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares! We will #MAGA!”
Trump may want to try to get Russia on board with tougher sanctions on Pyongyang. Moscow has objected to a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launch because the Kremlin isn’t accepting the U.S. assessment that the missile was “intercontinental,” insisting it traveled just over 500 miles making it a less-threatening intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Trump administration has confirmed it was, in fact, a longer-range intercontinental missile that, had it been fired on a lateral trajectory, could have reached the U.S.
OUT OF THE RING: Trump’s top White House expert on Russia, Fiona Hill, didn’t make the cut for the big meeting. Trump’s team reportedly considered bringing Hill, who handles Russia and European policy issues for the National Security Council, but that proposal did not come to fruition. “If she [Hill] wasn’t there it would be pretty bad, this is the most momentous thing in her portfolio,” Evelyn Farkas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, told the Daily Beast.
DEMS WORRIED: Ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith argues the country should be “seriously concerned” about what Trump may say or do during his meeting with Putin. “[Trump] is going in to the meeting without having created any kind of strategy to prevent future Russian attacks, and he has reportedly drawn up a list of ‘concessions’ to offer the Russian government. We should be seriously concerned about what he is going to do, and what message it will send to the world,” Smith said in a statement. Smith emphasized that Friday’s meeting was arranged “without ever having substantively acknowledged Putin’s role in ordering an attack on our democratic values and our system of government.”
Meanwhile Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump is “propagating his own personal fiction” by casting doubt on whether Russia interfered in the 2016.
DACHA DIPLOMACY: Trump has one potential bargaining chip in his pocket. Moscow would very much like the return of two diplomatic compounds in New York and Maryland that were seized last year by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian efforts to interfere in the election. The U.S. also expelled 35 diplomats, who were essentially labeled spies. While it’s not clear if the topic will come up, Putin has hinted that if the Cold War-era “recreational estates” are not returned, Moscow may be forced to retaliate.
MATTIS TAMPS DOWN THE WAR TALK: Quoting Winston Churchill’s famous maxim that it’s “better to jaw a jaw than war a war,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made a surprise visit to the Pentagon’s C-ring press area to conduct a brief impromptu news conference to try to rein in all the speculation about North Korea’s ICBM test, and what it means. “I do not believe this capability in itself brings us closer to war because the president’s been very clear, and secretary of state’s been very clear that we are leading with diplomatic and economic efforts,” Mattis told a small group of reporters. For more than 60 years, the U.S. military has prepared for possible war on the Korean peninsula and Mattis said it has options available for Trump if needed. “Any effort by North Korea to start a war would lead to severe consequences,” he said.
Mattis has been known to drop by the press offices to chat informally with reporters, but usually those interactions are strictly off-the-record. Reporters kept pressing Mattis about whether he was speaking on-the-record, and he kept saying “yes.” But Mattis obviously felt the need to add some context to Trump’s cryptic statement in Warsaw that he had “pretty severe things” he was considering to deal with Kim Jong Un’s regime.
Asked if the North Korea’s successful test of a two-stage missile capable in theory of reaching Alaska adds a “whole new dimension” to the problem, Mattis said, “I’m not going to speculate about that future situation. We’ll address it as it comes.” But he insisted diplomacy has not failed. “As [Gen. Vincent Brooks, U.S. Forces Korea commander] said it so well, it is our self-restraint that has prevented war in the face of provocations,” Mattis said. “Our self-restraint holds, and diplomatic efforts remain underway as we speak.”
The Trump administration began its calls for harsher economic sanctions on the North Tuesday, but during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, Ambassador Nikki Haley said the window for diplomacy was closing and military options remain on the table.
BURNING UP THE PHONE LINES: Mattis made a series of calls yesterday to his counterparts around the world, discussing North Korea with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo and Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.
And he also called Qatari Defense Minister Khalid al-Attiyah as the rift between Qatar and four Arab nations shows no sign of a quick resolution. “The secretary emphasized the importance of Qatar’s contributions to the D-ISIS coalition, in particular the recent Qatari contribution of C-17 cargo aircraft to the campaign to defeat ISIS,” said Pentagon chief spokesperson Dana White in a statement. “The secretary also discussed the state of relations among the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the importance of de-escalating tensions so all partners in the Gulf region can focus on next steps in meeting common goals.”
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain are vowing additional steps after Qatar rejected their demands over allegations that it supports extremist ideology. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tillerson would visit Kuwait next week in an effort to mediate a solution.
Good Friday 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: British Defense Secretary Sir Michael Fallon drops in on Mattis at the Pentagon this morning. Time was when a foreign defense minister visited the Defense Department, especially the Brits, there was a joint news conference, with the traditional two questions from each country’s press corps. But these days the Pentagon allows only a small pool to follow the leaders upstairs to hear brief, usually perfunctory welcoming remarks, and then maybe Mattis or Fallon will take a question or two from the pool reporter.
Fallon will be a bit more accessible later this afternoon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, when he sits down for a discussion with CSIS’ Heather Conley at 1 p.m. In addition to the usual topics of defeating the Islamic State and countering Russian aggression in Europe, Fallon is also expected to discuss how the U.K.’s Strategic Defense and Security Review of 2015 is designed to deal with the growing complexity and diversity of geopolitical challenges.
SPENCER GETS A HEARING, REDUX: After a postponement last month, Trump’s pick for Navy secretary will finally get an initial Senate nomination hearing on Tuesday. The Armed Services hearing for Richard V. Spencer, a financier and former Marine aviator, to be the Navy and Marine Corps’ top civilian is a first step toward confirming a key military position that remains unfilled under the Trump administration. Spencer could help Trump put his stamp on the Navy at a time when it hopes to shore up depleted forces and prepare to grow the fleet. The committee’s earlier attempt at a hearing in June was delayed due to the Obamacare debate.
Armed Services is also set to weigh four other Pentagon nominations on Wednesday, after a slow start by the administration in filling positions:
- David J. Trachtenberg for principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
- Owen O. West for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
- Ryan D. McCarthy for undersecretary of the Army.
- Charles D. Stimson for general counsel of the Navy.
DON’T BOOT NONCITIZEN RECRUITS: Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned Mattis Thursday that any attempt to cancel enlistment contracts with thousands of noncitizen military recruits will result in blowback from Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have begun to take notice of reports that an internal memo to Mattis proposed canceling the contracts of about 1,800 foreign-born, noncitizen troops recruited under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI, for their needed language and cultural skills. “If we fail to uphold the contracts we have made with MAVNI applicants, this will not only have a significantly deleterious effect on recruiting, it will also be met with a strong, swift congressional reaction,” Warner wrote in a letter to Mattis.
IRAQI POLICE IN A BOX: The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq has come up with a plan to keep the peace in the war-torn country after the military defeat of ISIS: “Police presence in a box.” The program calls for giving Iraqi police 100 shipping containers with laptops, furniture and Land Cruiser vehicles. The makeshift, mobile police stations will be distributed in Mosul and across five liberated provinces, said Canadian Brig. Gen. D.J. Anderson, who is director of partner force development for the coalition. “The contents can be unpacked and set up quickly to allow the police to immediately begin serving their citizens,” he said. Another 100 of the containers will be given to Iraqi border guards. The $50 million worth of containers will be paid for by the U.S. as part of its train-and-equip program.
HACKER BREACH: Hackers have targeted nuclear facilities in the U.S. since May, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. The New York Times obtained an urgent joint report by Homeland Security and the FBI that found hackers have been penetrating companies that run nuclear power plants and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the U.S. and other countries. Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which operates a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., is among the targeted companies, the report said.
CLAPPER RESPONDS: In response to Trump’s assertion that other countries as well as Russia may have interfered in last year’s presidential elections, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said, “That’s news to me.” Clapper told CNN last night, “We saw no evidence whatsoever that it was anyone involved in this other than the Russians.”
Clapper also said he didn’t know what Trump was talking about when the president asserted in Warsaw that “we did some very heavy research” and it turned out to be three or four intelligence agencies that produced the assessment not 17. Clapper said in his very first meeting with Trump, it was made clear the assessment was produced by the CIA, NSA and FBI, overseen by the DNI.
And as for the flawed 2002 intelligence about Iraq’s non-existent WMDs, Clapper copped a mea culpa. “I remember it because my fingerprints were on it,” Clapper said. “That was 15 years ago. The intelligence community has done a lot of things to make sure that never happens again.”
NEW CASUALTY POLICY: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, has instituted a new policy under which reports of U.S. troops killed in combat will be delayed by a few days, in order to inform the families before they hear about deaths involving unnamed service members through the media. Up to now, the U.S. military reported deaths in combat or by accident as soon as they happened, but withheld the name of the service member and any other identifying information, until 24 hours after the next of kin had been officially notified.
The problem, according to the U.S. spokesman for Operation Resolute support, is that any information inflicted emotional distress on anyone who had a loved one in the theater. “The ‘non-identifying’ information that has customarily been released in the past, ahead of next-of-kin notification has actually become identifiable because of our small footprint in the country,” Navy Capt. Bill Salvin said in an email from Afghanistan. “If I say a service member was killed in Helmand province, everyone will automatically think Marines because they are the team operating there now.”
The policy change, which was not publicly announced, was taken to task in a Buzzfeed report yesterday, which said the two-day delay “would eliminate real-time coverage of US operations in Afghanistan, just as the Trump administration considers sending more troops there to blunt Taliban advances around the country, particularly in urban centers.”
“We are going to release the same amount of information, it will just come a bit later than it has in the past,” countered Salvin. “We are balancing our obligation to our families and our obligation to release information to the media and the public in a timely manner. This will allow us to meet both of those obligations.”
But Salvin said in the event of a major engagement or mass casualty event, U.S. combat deaths would be reported right away. “We know that there are times when the situation will dictate that we put out information prior to notification being made or prior to the 24 hours post-notification being complete,” Salvin said. “The most recent green-on-blue [insider attack] is an example. The numbers of US wounded being reported were all over the place and we clarified the accurate information very quickly.
“Our primary concern is to protect the families of our fallen and wounded warriors and provide accurate information to the media and the public,” Salvin said. “Gen. Nicholson wants the support systems we have in place for the families of our fallen and wounded warriors to be in place with the families before a public announcement.”
THE RUNDOWN
Wall Street Journal: White House limits Pentagon on Afghan troop level
Reuters: U.S. Bombers Challenge China In South China Sea Flyover
Defense One: Mosul: What the Decade’s Largest Battle Says About the Future of War
AP: Analysis: Trump’s Poland visit a study in breaking norms
USA Today: Saudi Arabia is U.K.’s biggest promoter of Islamic extremism, report says
Defense News: Poland signs memo with U.S. outlining road map to buy Patriot, but no done deal yet
Politico: Russia’s former top diplomat urges Trump, Putin to open new security dialogue
USNI News: Littoral Combat Ship USS Gabrielle Giffords arrives In San Diego after Panama Canal transit
New York Times: A Libyan commander says his forces have taken Benghazi
DoD Buzz: Marine Corps wants smart trucks that can pretty much repair themselves
Fox News: Iran illegally seeking weapons tech from German firms, according to report
Task and Purpose: Is North Korea’s dictator really smoking next to this liquid-fueled ICBM?
UPI: Lockheed Martin receives $73.8 million long-range precision fires contract
Foreign Policy: Syria stalls U.N. investigation into chemical weapons attack
War on the Rocks: The risks and rewards of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War
Calendar
FRIDAY | JULY 7
9 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The fight against corruption in Colombia with the country’s Inspector General Fernando Carrillo Flórez and Comptroller General Edgardo Maya Villazón. wilsoncenter.org
1 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Global leaders forum with The Rt Hon Sir Michael Fallon MP, secretary of state for defense of the United Kingdom. csis.org
MONDAY | JULY 10
9:30 a.m. Senate Visitor Center 203/02. A panel discussion on the future of air superiority with Air Force Brig. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, Col. Tom Coglitore and Jeff Saling of Air Superiority 2030. mitchellaerospacepower.org
10 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Security and economic development: Silk Road and the Caspian. heritage.org
TUESDAY | JULY 11
8 a.m. 2101 Wilson Blvd. Procurement division meeting. ndia.org
9 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Russia’s Zapad 17 exercise and its implications for NATO and the United States. atlanticcouncil.org
9:30 a.m. Dirksen G-50. Nomination hearing for Richard V. Spencer to be Navy secretary. armed-services.senate.gov
10 a.m. Dirksen 419. Nomination hearing for Jay Patrick Murray to be alternate U.S. representative for special political affairs at the UN. foreign.senate.gov
10 a.m. Dirksen 342. Nominations of David J. Glawe to be undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, and David P. Pekoske to be assistant secretary of the Transportation Security Administration. hsgac.senate.gov
10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. A blueprint for maximizing the impact of U.S. foreign aid. brookings.edu
11 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. The U.S.-Tunisia strategic partnership and its importance to regional stability with Sen. John McCain and Youssef Chahed, Tunisia chief of government. heritage.org
WEDNESDAY | JULY 12
9 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Post-conflict peacebuilding: Key issues, challenges, lessons learned and best practices. wilsoncenter.org
9:30 a.m. Dirksen G-50. Nomination hearing for Ryan D. McCarthy, for Army under secretary; David J. Trachtenberg, for principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; Owen O. West, for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict; Charles D. Stimson, for Navy general counsel. armed-services.senate.gov
9:30 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The war on ISIS and the forgotten need for congressional authorization with Sens. Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake. wilsoncenter.org
10 a.m. Dirksen 419. Consideration of the Taylor Force Act. foreign.senate.gov
2 p.m. Rayburn 2172. Advancing U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere with the Fiscal Year 2018 budget request with Francisco Palmieri, acting assistant secretary of state and Sarah-Ann Lynch, acting assistant administrator with USAID. foreignaffairs.house.gov
2:30 p.m. Rayburn 2200. Subcommittee hearing on black flags over Mindanao and terrorism in Southeast Asia. foreignaffairs.house.gov
2:30 p.m. Dirksen 124. Subcommittee markup of the Fiscal Year 2018 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. appropriations.senate.gov
THURSDAY | JULY 13
7 a.m. 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd. Integrated air and missile defense symposium. ndia.org
8 a.m. 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Annual technology summit with Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, commanding general of U.S. Army Cyber Command. defenseone.com
8:45 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Cross-Strait relations re-examined: Toward a new normal? csis.org
9:30 a.m. Dirksen G-50. Attempted coup in Montenegro and malign Russian influence in Europe with Ambassador Nebojša Kaludjerovic. armed-services.senate.gov
10:30 a.m. Dirksen 106. Full committee markup of the Fiscal Year 2018 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. appropriations.senate.gov
12 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Regime change in Iran: From the 1953 coup to the Trump policy review. atlanticcouncil.org
2 p.m. House Visitor Center 210. The terrorist diaspora after the fall of the ISIS caliphate. homeland.house.gov
FRIDAY | JULY 14
12 p.m. 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW. Lost in translation? U.S. defense innovation and Northeast Asia. stimson.org
