Tag: Iraq
Stevenson’s army, January 10
Prostate cancer: treatable, not disqualifying from service
WSJ notes Biden’s loyalty to advisers
Iraqi government doesn’t really want to kick US out
Staffers ain’t like they used to be
Administration revives export advisory council
Correction: here’s the right link for Ed Joseph on Serbia
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, December 26
– WSJ reports on US intelligence efforts in China
– NYT summarizes the Trump plan for government in a new term
-US attacked Iran-backed militias in Iraq
– Economist reports investigation of MH-17 shot down over Ukraine in 2014
– WSJ reports on Egypt plan for Gaza
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, November 1
– WaPo says House GOP Israel bill will add $90 billion to the debt over 10 years.
– Yale prof warns against bombing Mexico
– Consistent with War Powers law and past precedent, Biden informed Congress of the recent US attacks in Iraq and Syria.
– I’ve often told the story that LBJ asked a prospective White House counsel if he was “a Yes lawyer or a No lawyer.” NYT says Trump would want only Yes lawyers in a new administration.
– SecState Blinken expects a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” will rule postwar Gaza.
Trade-offs [from D Brief]
Chinese-drone ban gains pace: Later today, bipartisan members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party plan to introduce the American Security Drone Act of 2023, the latest attempt to stop the U.S. government from buying drones built in China and other countries labeled as national security threats. It follows several failed attempts to extend the current ban on DOD purchases of Chinese drones to the rest of the government, including a companion to a Senate bill that was re-introduced in February after failing to pass in 2021.
Here’s a case for such a ban, from former INDOPACOM ops director Mark Montgomery, now with FDD. Essentially, he argues at D1, Chinese-made drones could spy on U.S. citizens and infrastructure.
Here’s a case against it, from drone expert Faine Greenwood, writing at Foreign Policy. The FP piece is paywalled, but she limns it here: “There’s one big, fat problem: there is no non-Chinese consumer drone company that does what DJI does. Much less does it at such a low price-point, which is a vital consideration for the vast swaths of modern drone users who don’t have unlimited cash to throw around. And building a DJI-killer is a lot harder than you might assume: although a number of Western competitors tried to knock DJI off the pedestal over the last decade, they all failed…Eventually, they largely stopped trying. This is also why both Ukrainians and Russians are continuing to chew through vast quantities of DJI drones on the battlefield, despite massive misgivings about their reliance on Chinese tech.”
DOD’s current bans: The Pentagon stopped buying drones from China’s DJI in 2017, and most off-the-shelf drones in 2018; that same year, Congress generally but not totally forbade the military to buy any Chinese-made drones.
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Syria is in good company in the Arab League
The Arab League decided yesterday in Cairo to readmit Syria. The League had suspended Syria’s membership in response to its violent crackdown on demonstrators in March 2011. President Assad will presumably attend the May 19 Summit in Riyadh. This comes on top of several bilateral normalization moves, including by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Conditions aren’t likely to be fulfilled
The readmission is supposedly conditional. Though I’ve been unable to find the official statement, press reports suggest the conditions include allowing humanitarian assistance and return of refugees, clamping down on Syria’s burgeoning Captagon drug exports, and the beginnings of a political process called for in UN Security Council resolution 2254.
I’ll be surprised if much of that comes to pass. Assad could and should have done all those things long ago. Preventing humanitarian assistance, blocking return of refugees, financing his regime with drug smuggling, and blocking any transition are all part of his strategy. Readmission to the Arab League is unlikely to change his behavior, which aims at restoration of his personal authority on the entire territory of Syria.
Fighting abates but conflict continues
That is still far off. The mostly Islamist remains of Syria’s opposition control parts of northwestern Syria while Turkish troops control several border areas, where they have pushed hostile Kurdish forces farther east and south. Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces control a large part of the east, with support from the U.S. Damascus requires Iranian and Russian support to maintain sometimes minimal control over the west and south. Israel continues to bomb Syria pretty much at will, to move Iranians and their proxies away from its border and to block military supplies to Hizbollah in Lebanon.
None of these conflicts is settled, but fighting has abated from his heights. None of the forces involved has the will and the wherewithal to change the current situation. Assad no doubt hopes that normalization with the Arab world will solve his economic problems and enable him to mount the effort required to regain more territory. He may negotiate to regain territory from Turkey in exchange for promises to clamp down on the Kurds. He’ll wait out the Americans, who aren’t likely to want to remain in Syria much longer.
Autocracy restored
If Assad is successful in restoring his autocracy, he won’t be alone in the Middle East. It is a long time since the Arab Spring of 2011. Tunisia’s fledgling democracy is gone, as is Egypt’s. Bahrain’s democratic movement was snuffed out early. Yemen’s and Libya’s “springs” degenerated into civil war. Sudan is headed in the same direction. Iraq has suffered repeated upheavals, though its American-imposed anocracy has also shown some resilience. Saudi Arabia has undertaken economic and social reforms, but driven entirely by its autocratic Crown Prince. The UAE remains an absolute monarchy.
Only in Morocco and Qatar have a few modest reforms survived in more or less stable and relatively open political environments. They are both monarchies with a modicum of political participation. Though Qatar allows nothing that resembles political parties, there is limited room for freedom of expression. Morocco is a livelier political scene, but the monarchy remains dominant whenever it counts.
America has already adjusted
The Biden Administration has already adjusted. It is treating democratic values as tertiary issues with any Middle Eastern country with a claim to good relations with the US. There is no more talk of Saudi Arabia as a rogue state. Washington is silent on the restorations of autocracy in Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain. The Americans want to see negotiated solutions in Yemen, Libya, and Sudan. Those are more likely to restore autocracy, or something like Iraq’s power-sharing anocracy, than any sort of recognizable democratic rule.
The Americans are not joining the Syria normalization parade. They are not blocking it either. Washington no doubt figures the conditions are better than nothing. We’ll have to wait and see if that is true.
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Stevenson’s army, May 6
FYI, I’ll be away for a while. But I’ll get to the saved papers when I return.
-In class, we read about the planning for the Iraq war and noted the inadequate planning for Phase IV. Author Garrett Graff has stunning revelations about the decisions on de-Baathification and disbanding the army that led to the insurgency.
– More on the Wagner fights with the Kremlin: WaPo found evidence in Discord leaks, now reports Prigozhin’s latest outburst.
-Politico sees challenges for CJCS successor Brown in some of his earlier statements.
– It’s a podcast, where Trump PDB briefer describes her work.
– Lawfare looks at the congressional debate over the debt language in the 14th amendment.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, March 31
– Both Russia and Ukraine make recruiting push.
– DOD pushes back at unfunded priority lists.
-Iraqi Kurdistan is crumbling, FP says.
– Two former officials assess Israel’s problems today.
– In FA, an interesting case for security guarantees to Ukraine.
– Also in FA, an argument taking seriously Xi’s preparations for war.
– WaPo has a list of nations still recognizing Taiwan.
– Foreign Service union opposes declassifying Afghan dissent memo.
– NYT says DeSantis foreign policy adviser was a hawk.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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