Stevenson’s army, December 9

Charlie, preoccupied with orals the last few days, sent this “catchup” last night:

I’ve been busy with orals the past 3 days. Here’s what I think is happening.

– The armed services committee leaders agreed on a compromise NDAA without ever giving the Senate a chance to vote on amendments or the bill. The House substittuted the NDAA package on a bill originally intended to approve a memorial for a Florida terrorist attack. The important statement of managers is here. A summary here.  BTW, included in the NDAA package is the first State Dept authorization bill in 20 years. Fred Kaplan wonders if members even looked at the bill.

This morning he added:

– US will send small arms and ammo to Ukraine.

– WSJ says US will tighten sanctions on Iran.

– Harvard report says China will soon lead US in tech.

– NYT reports problems boosting US R&D.

– Big national and defense strategy documents coming early next year.

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).