White House backs off China; Tillerson argues with Russia; The real reason NATO’s spending more; US deportation force takes shape; and just a bit more...

China warns against military force in North Korea while an influential state-run paper pitches a way out of the dilemma. "Amid challenge there is opportunity. Amid tensions we will also find a kind of opportunity to return to talks," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. "Military force cannot resolve the issue," he said, according to Reuters.

It’s not a particularly novel approach to the international community’s concerns over a nuclear-armed North Korea. But the newspaper, the Global Times, which is published by the Communist party's People's Daily, offered a way forward: “As soon as North Korea complies with China's declared advice and suspends nuclear activities ... China will actively work to protect the security of a de-nuclearised North Korean nation and regime," Reuters reports.

In the meantime, China’s “three most modern radar spy ships...left Chinese ports one after the other from March 27 to April 10 to allegedly keep track of the launch of a new Chinese spacecraft on April 20,” tech site Telegiz reports this morning.

About those ships: “Yuanwang-5, Yuanwang-6 and Yuanwang-7 are currently steaming towards undisclosed locations in the Pacific Ocean and will use their modern radars to ostensibly track the progress of the Tianzhou 1 unmanned cargo spacecraft after this spacecraft's launch on April 20. The Yuanwangs are officially classified as maritime tracking ships, each equipped with large dish antennae for tracking Chinese launch vehicles and satellites.”

Worth noting: “The radars aboard these ships, however, are used mainly to track the path of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), such as those operated by the United States.” More here.

President Donald Trump is more outspoken about his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, talking to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday to explain his “great chemistry” with Xi amid a portrait of “tensions turning to friendship,” as the Journal puts it. "Mr. Trump said he told his Chinese counterpart he believed Beijing could easily take care of the North Korea threat. Mr. Xi then explained the history of China and Korea, Mr. Trump said. 'After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,' Mr. Trump recounted. 'I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power' over North Korea, he said. 'But it’s not what you would think.'"

Writes the Journal’s Gerald Seib: “It’s safe to say very few people saw that coming. China was, as much as any country, the target of Trump broadsides during the 2016 presidential campaign—for not playing fair in the world economy, for taking advantage of the U.S., for stealing American business, for intimidating its neighbors.”

But Trump moderated that tone fairly dramatically in recent days, backing off a campaign pledge and “saying he would not declare China to be a currency manipulator, an action that could have led to higher tariffs on Chinese goods,” AP reports. “The accusation had formed a basis of Trump's argument for lost American jobs, on the grounds that an undervalued currency was boosting Chinese exports and leading to artificially low prices, all at U.S. manufacturers' expense.”

Was that change in tone related to an agreement on North Korea? "We're going to see,” Trump said Wednesday. “We're going to see about that."

From the other side of the Pacific: Here are two ways that Trump’s reversal on labeling China a currency manipulator played in Chinese media: "Eating his words!" and "Trump slaps self in face, again," The Wall Street Journal’s Te-Ping Chen wrote on Twitter.

From both sides of the Pacific: Take a look at “the information provided by the American president and the Chinese president about the same phone call on Tuesday,” the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale noted on Twitter Tuesday: Two lines from the White House versus more than three dozen from Beijing.

Topics discussed in Trump’s message: zero, aside from the fact that they talked by phone.

Topics discussed by Xi: tensions on the Korean peninsula; maintaining communications with the U.S.; Syrian chemical weapons use (Xi called them “unacceptable” and said a “political settlement” should follow); and that’s just the first 10 lines. Read on, here.

On the horizon: Possible new U.S. sanctions on North Korea, “possibly including an oil embargo, banning its airline, intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang,” Reuters reports this morning, citing U.S. officials. “The U.S. officials said the administration is considering an array of stiffer sanctions that could be applied on a ‘sliding scale’ proportionate to North Korean actions. Some steps could be applied unilaterally, and others through the United Nations, where China has a Security Council veto.” More here.

One more thing about North Korea: It may be capable of sarin-tipped missiles, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary diplomacy and defence committee, Agence France-Presse reports this morning. “His remarks were reported by public broadcaster NHK and leading national newspapers. Abe did not elaborate or say where he obtained the information, according to the reports.”

Recall that “Members of a Japanese doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains,” Reuters adds. More here.

From Defense One

It's Too Early to See a 'Trump Effect' on NATO Spending // Caroline Houck: The U.S. president's rhetoric may have allies talking about their growing defense spending, but it won't affect most budget proposals for months.

Trump Blew It at His China Summit // Michael Fuchs: The U.S. president’s performance last week suggested to his Chinese counterpart that he is all talk, and can be pushed around with subtlety and patience.

One of the World's Top Protest Apps Was Just Blocked in Russia // Patrick Tucker: The government is denying more than 400,000 Russian users access to Zello, which has been used to coordinate protest actions in several countries.

How Will Trump Get Us From Tomahawks to the Peace Table? // Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Trump called for an end to Syrian bloodshed. Tillerson was unprepared in Moscow to say how. But all roads still lead through Geneva.

The Steady Rise of Digital Border Searches // Kaveh Waddell: At the current rate, customs agents are on track to increase inspections of travelers' electronic devices by a third this year.

Trump Ends Federal Hiring Freeze, but Workforce Cuts Loom // Eric Katz: In issuing guidance for reductions, OMB director tells feds not to focus on who will be fired.

There's a New Player in the Horn of Africa // Abdi Latif Dahir: UAE is funding ports and military bases in an area already frequented by forces of the United States, Japan, France, Germany, China, and others.

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. #OTD1960: The U.S. launched Transit-1B, the first navigation satellite. Send us your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.

Hours of meetings between Russian leaders and America’s top diplomat on Wednesday aired a whole lot of grievances — and produced little more than a vow to keep talking. After meetings with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, then with President Vladimir Putin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson emerged to tell reporters that “There is a low level of trust between our countries” and “The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship.” Tillerson cited a few areas of agreement: “We both believe in a unified and stable Syria, and we agree we want to deny a safe haven for terrorists who want to attack both of our countries. We agree that North Korea has to be de-nuclearized. We agreed there needs to be more senior-level communication between our two countries, both at a diplomatic and military level.”

But Moscow pushed back hard on evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on April 6 against its own people, vetoing a proposed U.N. investigation into the attack.

New York Times on the diplomatic drama: “The outcome could well decide whether Mr. Trump’s oft-stated desire to remake American relations with Moscow will now disintegrate, just as similar efforts by Barack Obama did early in his presidency.” Read on, here.

Back in Washington, Trump declared that U.S.-Russia ties "may be at an all-time low," raising eyebrows among those who recall the Cuban Missile Crisis, not to mention decades of hair-trigger nuclear alert. AP, here.

Trump’s own big meeting of the day was with NATO’s Secretary-General, where he revealed another big turnaround in his thinking. "I said it's obsolete," the president said, alluding to a prominent campaign talking point. "Now it's no longer obsolete." How’d he get there? CNN has a good wrap-up: people (he’s listening to SecDef Mattis and NSA McMaster); counterterrorism (the alliance has a few new efforts in that direction); defense spending by members (it’s rising); and Russia (looking a bit less benevolent to Trump these days). Read, here.

About that spending boost: after hinting on the campaign trail that Trump’s America wouldn’t come to the aid of allies unless they paid up, the president has more recently taken credit for the general rise in collective NATO spending. But little, if any, of the increase is due to budget decisions made since his election. Defense One’s Caroline Houck tracked down the fiscal years and budgetary timelines for each NATO member, and demonstrates that Russia and previous pledges are driving the boost. Read, here.

U.S.-backed forces in Syria launched a new phase of their offensive to “clear Islamic State pockets from the countryside north” of the ISIS-held city of Raqqa, Reuters reports. “We aim to liberate dozens of villages in the Wadi Jallab area and the northern countryside ... and clear the last obstacles in front of us to pave the way for the operation to liberate Raqqa city," the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced this morning in a statement.

Reuters: “The SDF have closed in on Raqqa from the north, east and west. They have surrounded the Islamic State-held Tabqa area and its adjacent dam, some 40 km (25 miles) to the west of Raqqa, which is the focus of heavy fighting and where Islamic State has launched a number of counter-attacks.” More here.

Coalition friendly-fire airstrike killed 18 SDF fighters near Tabqa, Syria—where the SDF have been working to cut off ISIS from points west of Raqqa, the coalition announced this morning. The strike occurred on Tuesday, and “was requested by the partnered forces, who had identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position. The target location was actually a forward Syrian Democratic Forces fighting position,” CENTCOM said this morning.

Elsewhere in Syria, an “air strike late on Wednesday by the U.S.-led coalition hit poison gas supplies belonging to Islamic State, releasing a toxic substance that killed ‘hundreds,’” according to the Syrian army, Reuters reports. “A statement by the army, flashed on Thursday by Syrian state TV, said the incident in the eastern Deir al-Zor province proved that Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked militants ‘possess chemical weapons.’”

The U.S. military’s response: "The Syrian claim is incorrect and likely intentional misinformation," said coalition spox U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian to Reuters. And here’s the coalition’s short response on Twitter this morning.  

Your Thursday #LongRead: "International Law is Failing Us in Syria," warns Rebecca Ingber, associate law professor at Boston University, writing in Just Security on Wednesday. Grab your reading glasses, this one’s worth the click.

Russia says it’s open to restarting that aircraft deconfliction telephone line for pilots flying above Syria—but on two conditions: “One was the United States re-affirm it is committed to attacking the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliated terrorist group that is also fighting to remove Assad from power in Syria. The second condition was the United States conduct no additional strikes on government targets,” Stars and Stripes reported Wednesday.

Anyone’s guess where this will go from here since, as Stripes writes, “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the United States is not trying to get involved in Syria’s civil war, but the U.S. would hit Syrian government targets again if Assad used chemical weapons again.” More here.

ICYMI: Republican Sen. John McCain and Lindsey Graham took another sharp line on President Trump’s approach to the war in Syria: as long as Iran-backed Assad is there, the U.S. military cannot also defeat ISIS. Read their statement, shared by Defense One’s Kevin Baron, here.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is back in the news—this time AP confirms “a handwritten ledger [that] surfaced in Ukraine with dollar amounts and dates next to the name of Paul Manafort” contained “at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the ledger next to Manafort's name [that] were actually received by his consulting firm in the United States.”

The early takeaway: “The two payments came years before Manafort became involved in Trump's campaign, but for the first time bolster the credibility of the ledger. They also put the ledger in a new light, as federal prosecutors in the U.S. have been investigating Manafort's work in Eastern Europe as part of a larger anti-corruption probe.”

Adds AP: “The payments detailed in the ledger and confirmed by the documents obtained by the AP are unrelated to the 2016 presidential campaign and came years before Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman.” Details, here.

The conservative wonks at the Heritage Foundation have chimed in on the conflict in Ukraine and how the White House and Congress can work together to help “uproot corruption” and ensure Russia abides by the Minsk II ceasefire terms. In this Heritage plan: no fewer than 32 recommendations for the Trump administration. This one, like the Just Security #LongRead above, is also worth the click.

For your eyes only: Here’s what it looks like “When you have to drop the kids off at soccer at 4pm and then defend Stalingrad at 5pm,” according to the humorous Twitter feed of “Only in Russia.”

Lastly today, we pivot back stateside where, the Trump administration is moving quickly to build up nationwide deportation force, WaPo reported Wednesday. “An internal Department of Homeland Security assessment obtained by the Washington Post shows the agency has already found 33,000 more detention beds to house undocumented immigrants, opened discussions with dozens of local police forces that could be empowered with enforcement authority and identified where construction of Trump’s border wall could begin. The agency also is considering ways to speed up the hiring of hundreds of new Customs and Border Patrol officers, including ending polygraph and physical fitness tests in some cases, according to the documents.”

One possible hitch: “the prohibitive costs outlined in the internal report and resistance in Congress, where many lawmakers are already balking at approving billions in spending on the wall and additional border security measures.” More here.