Stevenson’s army, August 3

My SAIS colleague, Charlie Stevenson, distributes an almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. This is a second tasting. If you want to get it directly, follow the instructions below:

Interagency conflicts are a normal part of the policy process. Officials and agencies have different perspectives on problems and often different views on solutions. Yesterday I noted WSJ report of the conflict over trade policy. Today, NYT has THREE stories about other policy fights.
– The US military sees ISIS as a bigger threat in Afghanistan than does the intelligence community, assessing double the number of ISIS fighters as does the community.
-SecState Pompeo opposed the recent agreement with Guatemala, but the DHS acting secretary won the fight.
– Pompeo has fired the head of policy planning, apparently for management problems, but who knows.
– A trade prof argues that Lighthizer’s trade strategy has been proved a failure.
– BTW, the trade war with China has led to a drop to only 3rd US trade partner.
– Cong. Ratcliffe’s removal as DNI designee led the president to justify his poor vetting policy in an unusual way:
“I give out a name to the press and they vet for me. We save a lot of money that way,” Trump said.The president also seems to take China’s side on Hong Kong, calling the protests “riots” that China should deal with.

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