HOLD OFF ON THAT NOBEL PRIZE: For weeks now North Korea experts inside and outside government have puzzled over Kim Jong Un’s newfound willingness to commit to negotiating away his nuclear arsenal, without the usual demands and bellicose threats. Kim released three Americans he held as bargaining chips, and promised to shut down his nuclear test site. It all seemed too good to be true.

HAPPENING TODAY: Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford is meeting with his military counterparts at NATO’s brand new $2 billion headquarters in Brussels. His to-do list includes hitting up members to increase their contribution of military forces and capabilities the NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, which is still short about 1,000 troops from other NATO countries. The military chiefs won’t be making commitments, but will be carrying the message back to their respective defense ministers who meet next month at the new headquarters.

HASPEL OVER THE HUMP: It looks like the letter Gina Haspel wrote to Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has done the trick. Haspel’s nomination to head the CIA was in jeopardy because she was not seen as sufficiently renouncing torture during her confirmation hearing one week ago. Since then she has met with several senators one-on-one, and after her letter to Warner she picked up his vote along with Democrats Heidi Heitkamp and Bill Nelson.

Here’s the key paragraph that put Haspel over the top:

“Over the last 17 years, the Agency and I have learned the hard lessons since 9/11. While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world. With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior Agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken. The United States must be an example to the rest of the world, and I support that.”

The vote in the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled for today.

WAR POWERS HEARING: The bipartisan war authorization bill spearheaded by Sens. Bob Corker and Tim Kaine gets its hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning at 10. The committee is taking another shot at passing an updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, to replace the 9/11-era legislation being used as legal justification for military operations against terror groups around the world.

COMPETING FOR CONTRACTS: “Forty percent of Pentagon contracts were indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, which potentially limit competition, a government watchdog agency reports,” according to Defense News.

“Of the contracts, three-quarters were made to a single contractor, rather than multiple contractors, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Friday. GAO relied on data from 2015 through 2017 for the report.”

SMALL BUDGET, BIG THREAT: Army leaders were hit Tuesday with what Sen. Dick Durbin called a “town hall” question about how Russia could be a top threat to the U.S. with a relatively tiny defense budget. Moscow spends about $80 billion per year on defense, about 11 percent of the U.S. defense budget, which is set to top out at $717 billion in the coming year, Durbin pointed out during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the Army’s annual spending. “Let me get this straight, we are spending $600-$700 billion against an enemy that’s spending $80 billion. Why is this even a contest?” Durbin said.

The answer comes down to people, said Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff. “What is not often commented is the cost of labor and everyone who takes Econ 101 knows cost of labor is your biggest factor of production,” Milley said. “We are the best-paid military in the world by a long shot.”

The U.S. also has many more global military commitments compared to Russia, Army Secretary Mark Esper told the senators. “We have commitments of course with our NATO partners that we have to maintain. We have bilateral defense agreements with several countries in Asia,” Esper said. “You can’t look at one, you have to look at the sum of things.”

THE EYE-POPPING COST OF CT: The U.S. has spent $2.8 trillion fighting terrorism between 2002 and 2017, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Stimson Center. The study group found that the cost of counterterrorism efforts last year was a whopping $175 billion. The center says the report and accompanying fact sheet are the first to pull together data on counterterrorism spending by the U.S. government.

“The report … tracks funding changes across nearly two decades of shifting counterterrorism strategies, identifies concerns about the lack of transparent and accurate basis from which to assess US counterterrorism policy, and makes recommendations for redress,” a statement from the Stimson center says.

SELLING GUNS: “The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to make it easier to sell small arms abroad,” Defense News reports.

“The State Department has submitted a request to shift oversight on small-arms exports, such as semiautomatic rifles, from State to Commerce, kicking off a 45-day review period of the new policy, which has been long sought by the gun industry.”

BURIED POLLUTION REPORT: A House Armed Services subcommittee chairman is calling on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to release a pollution study that was reportedly buried because it could have wide-ranging implications for military facilities and communities around the country. The study shows chemicals in firefighting foam that was widely used by the military and have turned up in water supplies around 126 facilities could be dangerous at much lower levels, Politico reported. “My community of Dayton, Ohio is anchored by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base … Our air base, like many other military installations around the nation, has recently dealt with the detection of PFOS and PFOA [the chemicals] in groundwater, which may be threatening our municipal water supply,” Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the tactical air and land forces subcommittee, wrote in a letter to Pruitt.

Congress has already barred the military from using the fluorinated organic chemicals and the services are working on cleanups. But a report finding they are dangerous at lower levels than previously thought could raise the stakes and the danger to troops on bases as well as nearby residents. “If this study finds, as reported, that this is no longer an accurate level of safety for our drinking water, Congress and our constituents need to know immediately so we can begin to address it,” Turner wrote.

FIGHT FOR FARAH: The U.S. sent in air support Tuesday to help Afghan security forces in a fight with the Taliban over a provincial capital in Afghanistan. The NATO coalition claimed Afghan security forces were on the offensive in the western city of Farah as Air Force A-10s conducted a show of force and an MQ-9 Reaper drone struck Taliban targets.

The Taliban surged into the city center after a 2 a.m. assault and the provincial governor fled Farah, a city of 50,000 that is about 100 miles from the Iran border, according to press reports. Violence by the Taliban and an Islamic State affiliate has been on the rise Afghanistan, including deadly bombings in the capital Kabul, since Trump approved new military strategy that increased U.S. troops and aims to force the group to the negotiating table.

ABOUT THOSE TROOP NUMBERS: As the U.S. steps up Afghanistan operations and faces more violence, it appeared earlier in the month that it was facing new difficulties with the country’s security forces. A quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the number of Afghan army and police officers dropped by 35,999 personnel between January 2017 and January 2018. It turns out those figures are incorrect. The actual decrease was about half that at 18,680. SIGAR said U.S. Forces-Afghanistan provided new corrected data on local forces.

“The new numbers show a sharp decline in [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] force strength, but not as sharp of a decline as previously reported to SIGAR,” the Pentagon watchdog said in a statement Tuesday.

MATTIS BACKS IRAQ ELECTION: On Saturday, Iraqis went to the polls in the country’s first parliamentary election since the defeat of the Islamic State and it appeared Tuesday that populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, an old U.S. foe, was set to come out the winner. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who commanded forces during the Iraq war, said he will support the results.

“The Iraqi people had an election. It’s a democratic process at a time when people, many people doubted that Iraq could take charge of themselves. So we will wait and see the results — the final results of the election. And we stand with the Iraqi people’s decisions,” Mattis told reporters during a meeting with Iceland’s foreign minister. Al-Sadr’s coalition took the lead in the election after he called for reform in Baghdad and opposed Iran influence. During the Iraq war, he and his Mahdi Army led a bloody insurgency against U.S. forces.

IMMIGRANT KIDS ON MILITARY BASES? The Trump administration is looking into whether it can house children who illegally cross the border from Mexico at U.S. military bases, according to the Washington Post. The Department of Health and Human Services is set to visit four bases in Texas and Arkansas to see if they might be suitable locations for minors who arrived without an adult guardian or who might be separated from their immigrant families. The Defense Department has so far received no formal request from HHS to house immigrant children, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jamie Davis told the Washington Examiner.

HALEY WALKS OUT: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday blocked a call for an international investigation into Israel’s tactics in clashes with Gaza protesters, and blamed Iran and terrorist proxies for causing the violence. Haley then walked out of the chamber before the Palestinian representative to the council gave his remarks.

HEY, HE LIKES RAPTORS, TOO: Is Trump moving on from the F/A-18 and F-35? We noticed this tweet from CNN reporter Zachary Cohen yesterday: “In some non-North Korea related news, a source tells @sarahcwestwood Trump talked about the F-22 during today’s lunch meeting with lawmakers. Other topics included: Trade, Iran, West Virginia and Indiana.

“It was clear that ‘Trump loves the F-22,’ the source said.”

THE RUNDOWN

Air Force Times: US Air Force rescue units move closer to Africa and Eastern Europe

New York Times: Iraqi Election Frontrunner Moktada al-Sadr Courts Partners to Govern

Defense One: A Reckoning for Obama’s Foreign-Policy Legacy

New York Times: White House Eliminates Cybersecurity Coordinator Role

Foreign Policy: And Now for Some Crises That Are Completely Different

Military Times: Lawmakers seek $7.5 billion to counter China’s rise

Task & Purpose: The Army Is Inspecting Its Entire Apache Helicopter Fleet For A Critical Defect

Breaking Defense: All Armored Brigades To Get Active Protection Systems: Gen. Milley

New York Times: National Guard Has Eyes on the Border. But They’re Not Watching Mexico