Stevenson’s army, November 18

The Acting Defense Secretary announced cutbacks in US troops overseas. The press noticed that the CJCS was not present at the briefing.
Stars & Stripes says US will leave Somalia but stay in Djibouti

Micah Zenko notes that, even with the cuts in Afghanistan, there will be 22K civilian contractors..
NYT says foreign countries are signing up US lobbyists with Biden ties.
The Post’s Dave Weigel summarizes the gerrymander consequences of the elections. GOP ahead; Dems fell short.
Another think  tank group releases its plan for State Dept reform.
Interesting suggestion for a special China directorate on NSC.
And strangely, the State Dept policy planning staff has released a heavily footnoted paper on the China challenge.

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. 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).