PARTING SHOTS: Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a few parting shots at President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming national security team yesterday, in particular its full-throated embrace of a more multinational U.S. foreign policy as an alternative to President Trump’s doctrine of “America First.”
“I know some of these folks. They took a very different view. They lived in a bit of a fantasy world. They led from behind. They appeased,” Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “I hope they’ll choose a different course. Here we are in 2020. It’s different than 2015. I hope they’ll see the things that we have done and how this has delivered greater peace in the Middle East, how it’s reduced risk from North Korea.”
‘AMERICA IS BACK’: In introducing his picks for secretary of state, national security adviser, U.N. ambassador, homeland security secretary, and director of national intelligence, Biden declared, “It’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it: once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies, ready to stand up for our values.”
“My fellow career diplomats and public servants around the world,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. “I want to say to you, America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back.”
POMPEO’S RETORT: “Multilateralism for the sake of hanging out with your buddies at a cool cocktail party, that’s not in the best interest of the United States of America. We work with nations when we have common interests, and we develop coalitions that actually deliver real results and reflect the reality on the ground,” Pompeo said. “That wasn’t what was happening when we came in here to the State Department.”
AMERICA ALONE? Pompeo says he takes “great umbrage” to the criticism that Trump’s “America First” policy alienated America’s allies and forced the U.S. to act unilaterally. The argument was advanced this week in an article in Foreign Affairs in which former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and three co-authors wrote, “In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’ That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.”
“I have a lot of respect for Jim, but he’s just dead wrong on that,” said Pompeo “‘America First’ has been at its heart a recognition that when America is secure at home, when America does good things for our own economy and for our own prosperity, that America will be a force for good all around the region, and that indeed, we can’t deliver security, increased security around the world, when America is not secure.”
TRUMP WEIGHS IN: Responding to a Fox News tweet about the Mattis article, President Trump dumped on his former defense secretary, whom he liked to call “Mad Dog.”
“That says it all about Mattis. Obama fired him. I should have fired him sooner,” Trump tweeted. “Did best work after he was gone. World’s most overrated general!”
Good Wednesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Victor I. Nava. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. 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.
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HAPPENING TODAY: President-elect Joe Biden delivers a Thanksgiving address to the American people from Wilmington, Delaware, highlighting the “shared sacrifices Americans are making this holiday season.”
CLASSIFIED BRIEFINGS BEGIN: The Pentagon has confirmed that the complicated process of bringing the incoming Biden administration up to speed on the Defense Department’s myriad programs, missions, and war plans has begun in earnest.
The morning after the General Services Administration named Biden as the apparent winner of the presidential election, the Pentagon held a video teleconference meeting with members of Biden’s agency review team, the so-called “landing team” that coordinates the transition process.
“I’m providing a small tour on Monday next week for some of the agency review team leaders here in the Pentagon,” said Thomas Muir, who as director of the Washington Headquarters Services, is in charge of the transition. “There is dedicated office space for them in the Pentagon, in the reservation — here in the building, actually — that we provided for them. It allows for social distancing, for 6 feet between workspaces, to include video teleconference capacities of the unclassified side and at the classified side.”
Muir described the initial meeting as “good” and “productive” and said it was mainly to lay out ground rules, including COVID restrictions on how many people can be in the Pentagon at one time.
NOT BEHIND THE CURVE: “I must say the outreach has been sincere — it has not been begrudging so far, and I don’t expect it to be,” said Biden in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “They’re already working out my ability to get Presidential Daily Briefs. We’re already working out meeting with the COVID team in the White House and how to not only distribute but get from a vaccine being distributed to a person able to get vaccinated, so I think we’re going to not be so far behind the curve as we thought we might be in the past.”
On Fox, Pompeo said he has not talked to Tony Blinken, Biden’s pick to replace him, but pledged a professional handover. “We’ll do everything that’s required by law. We’ll make this work.”
SO FAR, SO GOOD: Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters yesterday that so far, no one except policy chief Anthony Tata has tested positive for COVID-19 after Nov. 13 meetings with Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis, who subsequently tested positive.
That includes acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, who shook hands with Karoblis and sat across the table from him without a mask.
“We’ve kind of set the standard before that we’re not going to get into every single negative test that a senior leader does,” Hoffman said at a Pentagon briefing. “I can just say that in the time the secretary’s been here, whether it’s between testing prior to travel, testing as a result of the close contact that was reported, testing due to a White House meeting, he’s been tested more than a half dozen times in the two weeks that he’s been the secretary of defense, and I have no positive test results to report.”
FEEDING THE TROOPS, BY THE NUMBERS: Every year, it falls to the Defense Logistics Agency to provide U.S. troops around the world with a home-cooked holiday meal with all the trimmings for Thanksgiving.
But this year, instead of large group gatherings in dining facilities, in many places, including the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Korea, Japan, Qatar, and Honduras, among others, the turkey and fixings will be served grab-and-go takeout style because of the pandemic.
“Food is emotional, and this year more than ever, it’s so important that DLA Troop Support got the turkeys, hams, and all the trimmings to our troops wherever they are stationed,” said Army Col. Eric McCoy, the director of the project. “Our troops are far away from home, and they definitely look forward to this meal. Disappointing them is not an option.”
Here are the stats for this year’s feed the troops mission:
- 9,000 whole turkeys
- 51,000 pounds of roasted turkeys
- 74,000 pounds of beef
- 21,000 pounds of ham
- 67,000 pounds of shrimp
- 16,000 pounds of sweet potatoes
- 19,000 pounds of pies and cakes
- 7,000 gallons of eggnog
INDUSTRY WATCH: The Center for Strategic and International Studies is out with a new report on the need of the defense enterprise to retain its technical talent, which examines how U.S. defense organizations struggle to onboard technical talent, leverage talent in support of defense missions, and develop and promote technical talent within defense organizations.
“Technology has outpaced many organizations in the defense enterprise. The result is that the enterprise today largely operates as a set of industrial-age organizations that leverage technology ineffectively rather than as twenty-first century organizations where technology and technologists are managed like a strategic asset,” the report concludes.
The Rundown
Washington Examiner: Trump reportedly set to pardon Michael Flynn
Washington Examiner: Rubio derides Biden’s foreign policy team: ‘Polite and orderly caretakers of America’s decline
Washington Examiner: Biden’s foreign policy team the ‘return of the Washington establishment’
Washington Examiner: Trump spy chief seeks SEC scrutiny of Chinese dominance in cryptocurrency
Washington Examiner: Biden urges speedy confirmation for national security team as GOP grumbles
Washington Examiner: Trump adviser tells allies Biden will ‘stand up to China’
Washington Examiner: Trump’s counternarcotics strategy nets 216 metric tons of cocaine and 74K pounds of marijuana worth $5.7B
Defense News: No SecDef Pick From Biden As Flournoy Hits Resistance From Progressives
Washington Post: As Biden Names Cabinet Picks, McConnell’s Silence Hangs Over Transition
Stars and Stripes: Senators Urge Pentagon To Test All Service Members, Families For Coronavirus
Wall Street Journal: Foreign Donors Pledge Billions In Aid To Afghanistan
Foreign Policy: Trump’s Pentagon Now Vetting Nonpolitical Experts
Defense News: Biden’s Gender Parity Pledge Could Be Watershed Moment For Women In National Security
Reuters: China Weighs Legal Steps Against ‘Diehard’ Supporters Of Taiwan Independence
New York Times: Biden Faces Pressure to Uphold Trump’s Strategy of Embracing Taiwan
Reuters: U.S. Cabinet Official Postpones Trip To Taiwan
Bloomberg: Boeing Stirs Pentagon’s Ire With More Dings, Damage to Aircraft
USNI News: USS Gerald R. Ford Making Steady Progress Ahead of Deployment
Task & Purpose: The Navy’s New Osprey Just Conducted Its First Drop-Off At Sea
USNI News: Navy Denies Claim Russians Drove Out U.S. Destroyer From Sea of Japan
Air Force Magazine: 10 Companies Win Joint US, UK Space Pitch Day Contracts
Stars and Stripes: U.S.-To-Philippines Arms Transfers Include Recon Drone, 100 Precision-Guided Missiles
Military.com: Is Marine Corps Service a Path Out of Poverty? ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Says Yes
19fortyfive.com: The F-35 Could Soon Be Flying For Switzerland
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | NOVEMBER 25
9 a.m. — Atlantic Council webinar: “Lessons for Afghanistan from Lebanon’s Peace Process,” with Afghanistan Ambassador to the United States Roya Rahmani; former UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi; Patricia Karam, regional director of the International Republican Institute’s Middle East North Africa Division; Daniel Martin Corstange, associate professor of political science at Columbia University; Irfan Nooruddin, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center; and Harris Samad, assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event
11 a.m. — German Marshall Fund of the United States webinar: “Ukraine, Georgia and the Future of the Transatlantic Alliance,” with Olha Stefanishyna, deputy Ukraine prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration; European Parliament member Anna Fotyga, member of the NATO Reflection Process Experts Group; Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the New Europe Center; Irakli Porchkhidze, co-founder of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies; and Bruno Lete, GMFUS senior fellow. https://www.gmfus.org/events
11 a.m. — National Museum of the American Indian virtual exhibition: “Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces.” https://americanindian.si.edu/calendar
THURSDAY | NOVEMBER 26 | THANKSGIVING
Federal offices closed
MONDAY | NOVEMBER 30
7 a.m. — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg briefs reporters will brief the press ahead of the meeting of the NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs, taking place via tele-conference on 1 – 2 December 2020.
TUESDAY | DECEMBER 1
All Day — NATO foreign ministers meet for two days via secure teleconference. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will brief reporters both days online. https://www.nato.int
12 p.m. — Aspen Cyber Summit will take place virtually over three days Dec. 1-3. featuring daily keynote conversations as well as short talks and panel discussions https://www.aspencybersummit.org
WEDNESDAY | DECEMBER 2
10:30 a.m. — George Washington University Project for Media and National Security Defense Writers Group conversation with Adm. Craig Faller, commander, U.S. Southern Command. https://nationalsecuritymedia.gwu.edu/
THURSDAY | DECEMBER 3
12 p.m. — R Street Institute and National Taxpayers Union webinar “Pentagon Purse Strings Episode 1: What is a Contingency? Exploring the OCO Account and Reform in the 117th Congress,” with Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.; Andrew Lautz, National Taxpayers Union, Jonathan Bydlak, R Street Institute; and Wendy Jordan, senior policy analyst, Taxpayers for Common Sense. https://www.rstreet.org/event
5 p.m. — National Security Institute at George Mason University “NatSec Nightcap” conversation: “Advancing Diplomacy Aboard, a Deep Dive into U.S. Foreign Policy,” with Elliott Abrams, special representative for Iran and Venezuela; and Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director, National Security Institute. https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/natsec-nightcap
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“For those who are discouraged by not being able to travel this holiday because of COVID-19, I just ask you to remember that there are millions of military members who over the last two decades have missed holidays in the service of the country, deployed across the globe in defense of the nation.”
Jonathan Hoffman, chief Pentagon spokesman.
