Stevenson’s army, September 10

At last some worthwhile stories about Congress, just back from its 6 week recess.
– RollCall says departing members will find it hard to get K St lobbying jobs.
– Another story notes that bipartisanship still works in actually passing bills.
–  Guess where one in seven Representatives traveled during the recess. [Israel].
– NYT has more detailed story on extraction of spy close to Putin. Unlike the original CNN story, the Times links the action to concerns about discovery in 2016, not Trump behavior with classified information.
What next in Afghanistan? Central Command leader says more US military activities.
– On civil-military relations, I agree with this piece by Prof Karlin and others praising SecDef Esper’s efforts to reassert civilian control of DOD.
– But I’m not persuaded by this piece arguing turning most paramilitary operations from CIA to SOCOM. But it’s worth debating.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, 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).