Today's D Brief: Biden and Putin; WH's new domestic terrorism strategy; Israel strikes Gaza; Taliban control grows in Afg; And a bit more.
Biden’s Euro trip comes to an end. Today is the final day of POTUS46’s first overseas travel since taking office five months ago. And that means all that’s left for U.S. President Joe Biden is to put the finishing touches on today’s bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva—perhaps the highest profile meeting on Biden’s overseas agenda, and one that White House officials expect to last at least four hours behind closed doors.
Some of the items in today’s U.S.-Russia talks: “[R]ansomware will be a significant topic of conversation,” White House officials previewed in a briefing with reporters. “They will also discuss the broader issue of cyber norms [and] cyber rules of the road.”
Biden’s big-picture message to Russia includes three “basic things,” administration officials said: “First, a clear set of taskings about areas where working together can advance our national interest and make the world safer. Second, a clear laydown of the areas of America's vital national interests, where Russian activities that run counter to those interests will be met with a response. And third, a clear explication of the President's vision for American values and our national priorities.”
It’s best not to forget at least one important thing about Russia, Dr. Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy Analysis told Defense One Radio: “The reality is that Russia, as a form of strategic posture, seeks to be strategically unreliable and strategically disruptive and destabilizing. And so the question is, how do you seek to repair their relationship with a country that has been doing all kinds of things to put us off on the agenda in incredibly unproductive ways ahead of the summit?”
Another POV: For Russia, “summits are theater; real action is at the party and people level,” former FBI agent Clint Watts tweets this morning. And that matters because, for Moscow, the goal is not to “try to defeat America, [but] have America defeat itself.”
One last thing: The Biden administration announced its pick for NATO ambassador, Julianne Smith, formerly of the Center for a New American Security, on Tuesday. You may remember Smith as then-Vice President Biden’s deputy national security advisor from 2012-2013; she later served as the acting national security advisor to the vice president in March and April 2013. Read more from the White House, here.
From Defense One
Lawmakers Blast Acting Navy Secretary’s Defunding of Naval Nuclear Cruise Missile // Caitlin M. Kenney: Harker confirmed that he did not consult with Pentagon or military leaders on the planned nuclear missile.
Navy Needs 'Champion' In Secretary Nominee Del Toro, Analysts Say // Caitlin M. Kenney: The service faces a tight 2022 budget and ship-buying concerns.
Biden’s Hair Should Be ‘On Fire’ Over Afghan Translators Being Left Behind, Senator Says // Jacqueline Feldscher: Sen. Angus King proposed solutions, such as sending Afghans to NATO allies temporarily, but said there’s not enough time for Congress to act.
The Biden-Putin Summit Could Produce Both a Little And a Lot // James Kitfield and Glenn Nye III: Moscow’s hybrid-war efforts limit what Wednesday’s meeting can accomplish, but even small agreements would make a big difference.
How Biden Can Leverage Missile Defense in His Summit with Putin // Joe Cirincione and John Tierney: Putting it on the table would put the United States in the driver’s seat in strategic stability talks.
How the U.S. Can Beat the Semiconductor Shortage (and China) // Evelyn N. Farkas: We must reverse our reliance on foreign manufacturing and build a better microelectronic systems industrial base.
US Navy Punts on Building a Fleet to Compete with China // Brent D. Sadler: The 2022 budget proposal aims to increase future capability but misses the reality facing it today.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson with Jennifer Hlad. If you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here.
For the first time ever, the U.S. now has a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the White House announced Tuesday — while using an acronym we’re likely to see more often inside government documents: “domestic violent extremists,” aka “DVEs.”
The new guidance has four main parts, focusing in turn on:
- Understanding “the full range of domestic terrorism threats”;
- Preventing the recruitment and mobilization of new followers;
- Disrupting terrorist activity before people are harmed;
- And gaining a deeper understanding of the “long-term issues” that lead ordinary Americans down the violent path of domestic terrorism.
Why this matters: Violence “driven by hate, bigotry, and other forms of extremism...poses a direct challenge to our national security, democracy, and unity,” said President Biden in a statement.
The insurrection of Jan. 6, of course, helped propel this assessment and the wider caution toward what the White House called “today’s domestic terrorists,” many of whom “espouse a range of violent ideological motivations, including racial or ethnic bigotry and hatred as well as anti–government or anti–authority sentiment.”
Lexicon review: In addition to DVEs, Americans can add “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (aka RMVEs) and “militia violent extremists” (MVEs). Why focus on them? Because those two groups present what the U.S. intelligence community in March called “the most lethal DVE threats, with RMVEs most likely to conduct mass–casualty attacks against civilians and MVEs typically targeting law enforcement and government personnel and facilities.” And the group most concerning from a global extremism perspective? “RMVEs who promote the superiority of the white race.”
- BTW: There are still more acronyms to know in this field, including “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists,” (or AGAAVE) domestic extremism expert Clint Watts wrote in a response essay after reviewing the White House’s new strategy.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even chimed in on the strategy’s release, saying in a statement that, “While domestic law enforcement agencies take the lead, the Department of Defense will do our part to support this important strategy. That includes maintaining the Department’s robust relationship with federal law enforcement as well as refining our policies to better address this issue within the Department.”
Bigger picture: This is not a free-speech issue about blogs and social media; this is about violence, the White House says. “Our country and its laws leave wide open the space for political and ideological views and their articulation, including through peaceful protest. But they leave no room for unlawful violence. This Strategy is designed to preserve the former while preventing the latter.” Read over the new strategy in full (PDF) here.
Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas positions inside Gaza again today for the first time since Tel Aviv brokered a ceasefire with the militants on May 21.
Background: “On Tuesday, hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting ‘Death to Arabs,’ paraded in east Jerusalem in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence,” the Associated Press reports from Jerusalem. “Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons that caused at least 10 fires in southern Israel.”
Today, Egyptian and UN officials are racing to keep the sides from renewing the cycle of violence. So far, the airstrikes do not appear to have resulted in deaths, the Wall Street Journal reports. The New York Times has more here.
Afghanistan drawdown latest: The U.S. has now handed over six facilities across the country to the Afghan security forces, U.S. Central Command officials announced Tuesday.
About a month ago, that facility number was just one. And at that time (May 11), “the equivalent of approximately 104 C-17 loads of material” had been moved out of Afghanistan, CENTCOM said. This week, that C-17 metric has risen to 611.
Meanwhile, alleged Taliban control of the country is growing, with nearly 30 districts falling to the group over the past six weeks, Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported on Monday.
The 30,000-foot view: The Taliban now controls “half of the country’s 34 provinces,” Roggio writes, and notes, “The Afghan government has been unable to regain control in any of the 32 districts” seized in the past month and a half.
Apropos of nothing: See what 20 years of U.S. defense industry consolidation look like in one efficient chart spanning 1980-2001. This rare data visual was located and shared on Twitter by the UK’s Emma Salisbury (also of War on the Rocks) via this NASA report (PDF) from way back in 2002.
And finally today: The Pentagon could get a new top China policy expert after the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up Dr. Ely Ratner’s nomination to become the next Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.
Ratner and five other nominees are up for a vote this morning beginning at 10 a.m. ET. Details at SASC here.