Stevenson’s army, May 17

– Jonathan Swan of Axios has Politishocking story of how, right after the election, President Trump used his personnel office to prepare a memo ordering US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, Somalia, Germany, Iraq & Syria by January 20. The memo, never shown to NSA O’Brien or WH Counsel Cipollone, was sent to newly installed acting SecDef Miller. Pushback from O’Brien and CJCS Milley led to a meeting where Trump agreed to less drastic withdrawals.
-NYT reports that Biden, in private meetings, is often deliberative, temperamental, demanding of information, slow to decide.  Sounds pretty normal to me.
-Politico questions whether Biden has too many Special Envoys.

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).