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Stevenson’s army, November 19

– The acting SecDef signed an order elevating the Special Forces to a status equal to the Service secretaries. There’s confusion as to what this means in practice.
– A GMU institute has some ideas on the defense industrial base.
– Many voices have criticized the administration’s abrupt drawdown from Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich offers a contrary view.
Politico offers some wise words on Sen. McConnell:

MCCONNELL HAS A MAXIM, though, and it’s quite easy to discern from watching the Capitol: If you can beat him, beat him. MCCONNELL is driven by power. If you have the votes to stop him from exerting his will, then do it, and if you can’t, then that’s too bad. He doesn’t care for letters urging him to do things, or press conferences calling him the devil. To call it bare-knuckle politics would be kind.

DEMOCRATS ARE EAGER TO REMIND that they don’t play MCCONNELL’S game. And that couldn’t be more evident.

MCCONNELL’S strength is that he has a united Senate GOP Conference at nearly all times. They follow him, and trust him. So, the road map for BIDEN here is quite clear. He has two general options: Can BIDEN create an environment in which he has a governing coalition willing to split with MCCONNELL? Or, more likely, can BIDEN — the self-styled master legislator — act quickly to move on areas in which the two sides have shared legislative priorities: Covid relief and perhaps a government funding deal, if that doesn’t get done this month.

ANOTHER THING THAT WILL DRIVE Republicans is a tough 2022 map. There are a bunch of potentially competitive states Republicans will have to wage races in, including FLORIDA, GEORGIA, IOWA, KANSAS, MISSOURI, NORTH CAROLINA, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA and WISCONSIN.

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).