The D Brief: Hegseth softens Panama talk; Trump’s budget flip-flop; Arms in space; EUCOM’s plea; And a bit more.
SecDef Hegseth vowed to “take back” the Panama Canal from Chinese influence in remarks Tuesday that Reuters reported “appeared fine-tuned, talking tough but offering some assurances to Panamanians still unsettled by Trump's threats to reclaim the canal.”
“China did not build this canal,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a pier in Panama City. “China does not operate this canal and China will not weaponize this canal. Together with Panama in the lead, we will keep the canal secure and available for all nations.”
In a statement Wednesday, Hegseth “strongly welcomed President Mulino’s commitment to make Panama the first country in our hemisphere to exit the Belt and Road Initiative, and to reduce China’s problematic presence in other areas,” the Pentagon said. “Hegseth also congratulated President Mulino for Panama’s efforts to reduce illegal immigration and for closing the border in the Darién [jungle].”
The Pentagon also highlighted a raft of prior agreements between the two countries’ militaries involving several meetings with top-level officials as well as training exercises, including one focused on “Canal defense in Panama” set for 2026. Read more, here.
Expert reax: “On the whole, this hasn't been a winning issue for the United States in terms of public diplomacy in Panama,” Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.
The US needs “weapons in space,” SPACECOM head says. “It's time that we can clearly say that we need space fires and we need weapon systems. We need orbital interceptors” for President Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defense vision. “And what do we call these? We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight,” Gen. Stephen Whiting said Tuesday at Space Symposium. Whiting has previously emphasized the need for “space fires,” but this is the first time he has openly called for “weapons” in space.
U.S. officials have shied away from such calls in the past for several reasons, including fear of touching off an orbital arms race, for strategic ambiguity, and because they have seen value in supporting the demilitarizing spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has reports from Colorado Springs, here.
The Navy wants dashboards that holler before things break. Real-time data is great, leaders say, but they want something more predictive, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports from Sea-Air-Space outside Washington, D.C.
ICYMI: Trump didn’t want a trillion-dollar defense budget two months ago. A day after the president and his defense secretary announced the imminent arrival of America’s first 13-figure defense-budget request, your correspondents were reminded of what Trump said on the topic in mid-February.
“There's no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on [the] military,” the president said in the Oval Office in mid-February. “There's no reason for you to be spending $400 billion—China is going to be at $400 billion,” he told reporters. “I'm going to say we can settle this, we can spend this on other things.”
Now Trump has changed his mind, for unspecified reasons. “We’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military,” he said at the White House Monday. “$1 trillion, and nobody’s seen anything like it.”
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1981, the U.S. ballistic-missile submarine George Washington collided with Japanese cargo vessel Nissho Maru in heavy fog in the East China Sea, sinking the ship and killing two of its Japanese sailors. The Navy’s 24-hour delay in reporting the incident upset the Japanese and ultimately required diplomatic intervention by President Ronald Reagan.
Europe
Keep U.S. troops in Europe, EUCOM commander says. A drawdown of U.S. forces in Eastern Europe would make it harder for NATO and the United States to respond to ever-increasing Russian aggression, Gen. Chris Cavoli, commander of U.S. European Command, or EUCOM, said Tuesday in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.
10K-troop drawdown coming? Cavoli’s advice came just hours after NBC News reported that U.S. defense officials are considering removing up to 10,000 troops from the region. Asked Tuesday about the NBC report, Katherine Thompson, who is performing the duties of assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee that no decision has been made. “We are taking into account not only the dynamics in [EUCOM] but in all of our theaters, and evaluating that based on President Trump's stated interests,” as part of a global force posture review, Thompson said.
Moving U.S. troops away from Europe’s eastern front would “increase the amount of time it took to respond” to a Russian attack, Cavoli said Tuesday. “It depends, of course, on what forces were hypothetically to be removed. It depends on what kind of action was required to counter Russia. But clearly, moving things to the other side of the Atlantic increases the time-space challenge.”
Cavoli added that European bases and agreements are vital to wider global missions, not just for countering Russia. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports. Last year, during Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone assault on Israel, much of the U.S. ballistic-missile-defense response was launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean, under EUCOM command. The command also supplied aerial refuelers and managed regional airspace, extending its reach into the U.S. Central Command and Africa Command areas of operation. That speed and flexibility stem from “our proximity and our familiarity with the area,” Cavoli said, reinforced by longstanding host-nation permissions. Read more, here.
Developing: The U.S. military is drawing down from a logistics hub in southeastern Poland that helps supply Ukraine, Politico reported Tuesday after an announcement Monday from United States Army Europe and Africa.
“The important work of facilitating military aid to Ukraine via Jasionka will continue under Polish and NATO leadership, supported by a streamlined U.S. military footprint,” U.S. military officials said Monday. Troops from Norway, Germany and Britain will help the Polish forces at Jasionka, Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said on social media.
“After three years at Jasionka, this is an opportunity to right-size our footprint and save American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year,” said Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.
New: Ukraine says it captured two Chinese men fighting alongside Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy alleged Tuesday with an accompanying video on social media. “This happened on Ukrainian territory—in the Donetsk region. Identification documents, bank cards, and personal data were found in their possession,” said Zelenskyy.
“We have information suggesting that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier's units than just these two,” the president said. “I have instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to immediately contact Beijing and clarify how China intends to respond to this,” he added.
“I think the U.S. needs to pay more attention to what's happening today,” Zelenskyy said in a press conference Tuesday. Reuters and AP have more.
Japan wants to join NATO’s Ukraine-focused training mission headquartered at a U.S. base in Wiesbaden, Germany, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani announced during a visit to Tokyo by NATO chief Mark Rutte. “We cannot be naive, and we really have to work together, assess what is happening,” Rutte told reporters. “China is supporting Russia’s efforts. China is building up its armed forces, including its navy, at a rapid pace,” he said.
Caveats: “Details of the mission, including the possibility of sending any Japan Self Defense Force members to Wiesbaden, were still to be discussed. But any Japanese cooperation was not expected to involve combat,” AP reported from Tokyo.
The defense chiefs for Ukraine’s allies (minus the U.S.) are meeting in Brussels on Thursday. The UK and France are hosting. And on Friday, the UK and Germany will lead the next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which will also not include U.S. officials for the first time in its three-year existence. That, too, is happening at NATO HQs in Brussels.
Additional reading: “Croatia to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030,” Reuters reported Tuesday from Sarajevo.
Trump 2.0
The Congressional Budget Office says a review of March statistics reveals Elon Musk’s DOGE failed to achieve measurable savings last month. That’s according to the CBO’s monthly budget review (PDF), which was released Tuesday.
What’s going on: Because March began on a Saturday, certain payments that ordinarily are made in March were actually sent in February. Without this information, you might think at first glance that U.S. government spending fell by $38 billion compared to 2024; however, after adjusting for the calendar, spending rose $45 billion compared to last March. (Details on page 6 of the CBO report, linked above.)
And lastly, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just launched a DOGE-style team to cut costs and uncover the “weaponization” of U.S. intelligence.
It’s called the Director’s Initiatives Group, but its “composition…and its level of access and clearance remain unclear,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Moreover, finding exactly where to halt spending might prove challenging since “much of the $106 billion annual U.S. spy budget pays for expensive satellites and other sophisticated collection platforms, as well as CIA case officers and analysts, who are likely to prove harder to cut without affecting intelligence operations,” the Post reports.
Also notable: “Career officials at the ODNI have expressed concerns that Gabbard is fundamentally skeptical of the intelligence community and the analysis it provides the president.”
And ICYMI: “On Friday, also as a result of a Trump order, Walter Weiss, the chief technology officer in the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, was notified that he was being removed from his position, according to five current and former U.S. officials.” Read more at WaPo, here.
Relatedly, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is holding up Trump’s CISA nominee to get a report on Salt Typhoon released, Reuters reports. Wyden has been fighting to get the agency to release a 2022 report on insecurity in the U.S. telecommunications industry.
NEXT STORY: Keep US troops in Europe, EUCOM commander says