Deadly standoff in Kabul; Hiccups on Obama’s Western Pacific swing; Next ICBM’s cost soars; FBI investigating Russian hackers; and a bit more.
An 11-hour standoff in Kabul ends with at least 35 dead and more than 100 wounded. Taliban suicide bombers struck near the Afghan Defense Ministry Monday afternoon. “The first blast struck as employees were leaving at the end of the workday, near one of the highly fortified compound’s gates. A second bomber detonated his explosives as rescuers rushed to the scene,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Among the dead were a number of high-ranking police and military officials including the police chief and deputy for [Police District 2],” Afghanistan’s Tolo News adds.
That attack was then followed shortly afterward by a car bombing near the embassy district on Monday when CNN reports “a car bomb exploded outside the gates of the CARE NGO,” which triggered a siege by three gunmen who “barricaded themselves in close to an office of aid group Care International and a government complex” before security forces killed three attackers, Reuters reports from the capital. By the end, “Forty-two people, including ten foreigners, were rescued by Afghan security forces during the attack,” CNN added.
In case you were curious: Here’s where ISIS and the Taliban maintain an influence across Afghanistan, via a map from Agence France-Presse.
A hiccup in U.S.-Philippine relations overshadows the first day of the ASEAN summit in Laos, where world leaders are set to discuss terrorism to South China Sea tensions, the AP reports Vientiane. Manila’s new President Rodrigo Duterte “has bristled repeatedly at criticism over his ‘war on drugs,’ which has killed about 2,400 people since he took office two months ago,” Reuters reports, setting the scene for comments Duterte later said he regretted. “Such a conversation, Duterte told reporters, would prompt him to curse at Obama, using a Filipino phrase ‘putang ina’ which can mean ‘son of a bitch’ or ‘son of a whore.’”
As a result, President Obama decided to cancel a meeting today with Duterte—which would have been his first with the new leader since being elected nearly two months ago—and said this morning that “his push to rebalance U.S. foreign policy to focus more on Asia was not ‘a passing fad.’”
For what it’s worth, AFP rolled up a series of offensive remarks given by Duterte in recent months, and you can catch them in all their color, here.
A swap-out on the itinerary: “Instead of the Duterte meeting, Obama plans to hold talks with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, said Ned Price, spokesman for the White House National Security Council - a meeting where the response to North Korea's latest missile tests is expected to be on the agenda.”
But that wasn’t the only hiccup for Obama’s party upon arrival to China this weekend, the WSJ reports, rolling up an embarrassing series of “kerfuffles” designed “to diminish the U.S.”
What’s next on the ASEAN agenda: “The 10-nation ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The summit will be followed by a series of other meetings on Wednesday and a summit Thursday between leaders from ASEAN and other countries, including the United States, China, Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.”
Before we leave the region, the U.S. wants to “tighten” sanctions on North Korea after Pyongyang launched three ballistic missiles on Monday while leaders of the G20 met in China.
From Defense One
The Same Culprits That Targeted U.S. Election Boards Might Have Also Targeted Ukraine // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker reports: More circumstantial evidence suggests Russian-backed actors targeted state election boards.
Want to Lead? Talk to the Media // Robert T. Hastings, Jr., a former acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, says American voters deserve to be informed by their candidates and generals.
The United Nations: What’s the Point? // The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman: It’s not clear the organization can effectively confront—or even survive—today's challenges.
Duterte Shakes Up Relations with U.S., Shores Them Up with China // The Council on Foreign Relations’ Richard Javad Heydarian reports that the Philippines’ new president is cozying up to Beijing and sending mixed messages on existing U.S. troop agreements.
The Military’s Supermarket Goes Shopping for Better Encryption // NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein: Computer-generated passwords are stored beside personal and financial data. Security should be tighter than that, a report from the Defense Commissary Agency says.
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1975, a Soviet pilot flew his MiG-25 to a Japanese airfield and defected to the West. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
ISIS attacked Baghdad with a car bomb this morning, killing 12. “The explosives-laden pick-up truck was left in a parking lot in the Shiite-dominated district of Karradah, near a hospital and shops, a police officer said. Up to 28 people were wounded and at least 15 cars were damaged,” AP reports.
And multiple bombings struck Syria on Monday, killing at least four-dozen from the far western coast of Tartus all the way to the far eastern Kurdish enclave of Hasakah.
Obama and Putin met on Sunday looking for a path forward on implementing a ceasefire in Syria. The result? No ceasefire and more meetings in the future. The WSJ has more on that difficult road, here.
The FBI is investigating the Russians for possible tampering in the U.S. presidential election, the Washington Post reported Monday. “The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. ‘This is something of concern for the DNI,’ said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. ‘It is being addressed.’”
Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties “are urging the president to take the Russians to task publicly,” the Post writes, adding the Obama administration is still weighing its options. More here.
GOP 2016 contender Donald Trump just received the backing of “nearly 90 military figures, who urge a “long overdue course correction in our national security posture,” The New York Times reports this morning.
Said retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn: “We had to stop accepting names because we were running out of time…These were people that have been passing us ideas from national security to education ideas.” So who are these 88 figures? Catch all the names, along with their open letter, here. (Compare and contrast with the 50 natsec pros who came out against Trump last month, here.)
The next ICBM could cost $85 billion. That’s one-third more than the U.S. Air Force has been saying. Citing an Aug. 22 memo by USAF Secretary Deborah James, Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio lays it out: A new estimate on the cost of developing and buying 642 new missiles to replace today’s Minuteman IIIs is so high that raising new questions about the future need for the land-based member of the nuclear triad. Read the whole thing, here.
Lastly today: For your eyes only—here’s a nice crystal-clear 3-minute video of a B-1B taxiing and taking off from RAF Fairford.