SitRep: Trump and Putin to Talk; Sanctions Relief for Moscow; Washington Stumbling into China Crisis

Putin on Line One. Amid swirling rumors that President Trump’s team is preparing an Executive Order lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state-run TASS media agency Friday that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will speak by phone on Saturday. Peskov wouldn’t comment on what the conversation will entail, telling reporters in Moscow, “Let’s see, let’s just be patient.”

Likewise, a source told Reuters Friday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also scheduled to speak with Trump Saturday, and you can bet that Russia will be high on the agenda in that chat. But the news service reports that if Washington walks away from the sanctions on Moscow, it’s far from certain that the European Union would follow.

Odd Future. Any move by President Trump to lift sanctions on Russia is guaranteed to run into a storm of criticism on Capitol Hill, particularly among Congressional Republicans who spent years complaining that then-President Barack Obama’s economic penalties didn’t go nearly far enough. For more, check the recent FP story that noted the complaints from some U.S. defense officials about the sanctions, and how the Russian war machine found ways to grow and even profit under the penalties.

Not the only great power in town. While the Kremlin might be on speed dial, Washington’s relationship with Beijing looks to be heading in the opposite direction. And Chinese officials are warning that the Trump team is making the possibility of conflict more likely.

Wading to these contested waters is FP’s Dan De Luce, who writes that recent aggressive comments about the South China Sea from Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson and White House spokesman Sean Spicer “suggest President Donald Trump’s White House is eager to take an aggressive tone with Beijing, but lacks a coherent strategy to deal with China or a basic grasp of the legal and security issues at stake in the South China Sea, said former officials, diplomats, Asia experts and congressional aides.” Evan Medeiros, who served as the top advisor on Asia in Obama’s White House, tells FP, “this is how you can stumble into a crisis.” Read the whole thing here.

War ready. Trump will visit the Pentagon on Friday afternoon to formally swear-in Defense Secretary James Mattis, who, the New York Times reports, could soon be tasked with devising “plans to more aggressively strike the Islamic State, which could include American artillery on the ground in Syria and Army attack helicopters to support an assault on the group’s capital, Raqqa.” Trump wants the new war plan in 30 days, an official said.

The White House is also pushing for a review of the United States nuclear posture, as well as a report on how to get after meeting the president’s goal of fielding a “state of the art” antimissile system. The Washington Post is also hearing things, and reports there are more orders coming down “for a review of cyber capabilities and vulnerabilities, in advance of what is expected to be greater use of offensive powers; and [to] direct the Pentagon to quickly develop plans to reduce spending on items not deemed ‘highest priority,’ while ramping up programs to expand the armed forces.”

You might want to circle back to a recent story in FP by Dan De Luce and Paul McLeary outlining some of the thinking from current and former military brass on the wisdom of sinking more U.S. assets — including ground troops — into Syria.

The bill. A bigger military costs more money, and President Trump doesn’t have a problem increasing the national debt to get there. He told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday that while “a balanced budget is fine,” he’s not too worried about it. “Sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going. And we have to take care of our military. Our military is more important to me than a balanced budget.” This stands in stark contrast to the anti-deficit, small budget mindset of Trump’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney. You can read more on Mulvaney’s budget hawkery — and his conflicting comments on Trump’s defense spending plans, from FP here.

You used to call me on my cell phone. The White House “abruptly asked several senior State Department officials to leave this week, including a key official who would’ve been in charge of implementing President Donald Trump’s plans to curtail refugees from Muslim-majority countries,” FP’s John Hudson reports in a new get. “Contrary to a report that the departures amounted to a ‘mass exodus’ of officials ‘who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era,’ the officials received letters from the White House that their service was no longer needed. “Characterizing these as protest resignations is totally inaccurate,” a State Department official told Hudson.
Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Philippines

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana says the basing deal the U.S. signed with the country is still on despite the anti-American rhetoric from the country’s mercurial president, Reuters reports. The U.S. and the Philippines inked a deal called the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014, allowing for the U.S. to beef up rotations at five different bases throughout the country. The move had been seen as a hedge against the rise of China, which holds a number of territorial disputes with Manila, but the election of President Rodrigo Duterte and his verbal broadsides against the Philippines’ defense relationship with the U.S. had put a question mark over whether the deal would continue.

U.K.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is in town and ready to talk NATO. May is in the U.S. for her visit with President Trump and gave a hint of the message she might deliver to him in a speech to Congressional Republicans in Philadelphia on Thursday. She spoke of the need both to reform multilateral institutions like NATO but also highlighted their centrality to dealing with tough problems like the spread of ISIS. May also showed some acceptance of Trump’s tilt toward Moscow but offered the admonition of “engage, but beware.”

Russia

Something odd is happening in Russia. On the heels of the reported arrests of two cybersecurity figures, including a former intelligence officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and a senior cybersecurity researcher at the Kaspersky Labs, Buzzfeed rounds up the latest news from Russian language media and finds that there are more shakeups in Russia’s cybersecurity world. Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, an FSB officer who had worked at the Mikhailov in the the Center for Information Security, was also reportedly arrested in December and the head of the agency’s Center for Information Security, Andrei Gerasimov, was also fired recently.

Russia is getting cozier with the Taliban, threatening to upending American influence in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. Over the past month, Russia has carried out a series of actions to lend legitimacy to the Taliban, including holding direct talks with the group in order to formulate a joint strategy with Moscow against the growth of the Islamic State in the country. Russia also threw a wrench into a component of a peace deal hammered out by the Afghan government to bring notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar into the political process by blocking his removal from the U.N. sanctions list.

Homeland Security

President Trump’s executive order prohibiting visas from being issued to residents from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries doesn’t actually align with where foreign terrorists have come from since 9/11, according to numbers crunched by Commentary’s Max Boot. Trump’s executive order covers seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. But when Boot looked at the 89 identified terrorist suspects involved in 56 attacks and plots in the United States since 9/11, most of them were Americans. The remaining 42 — save for three Somalis — were all from countries not on Trump’s visa ban list.

Oops

One of the Trump administration’s hires is facing a criminal charge after trying to take a handgun on board a flight with him at Reagan National Airport. The Wall Street Journal reports that Breitbart editor and television pundit Sebastian Gorka has a misdemeanor charge before he begins work at the White House under Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor. It’s unclear whether the weapon Gorka allegedly tried to bring on board the flight was loaded or whether he will have to pay a fine, serve out some kind of sentence or if the charge will be dismissed entirely.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Spc. Christopher Brecht