The Cable
The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Situation Report: American student arrested in North Korea; Jeb Bush has ideas about nukes; Clinton camp rips Sanders over Iran comments; changes for the Army; another Navy ship breaks down; and lots more

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley BREAKING: The state-run North Korean media announced Friday that an American university student who had entered the country as a tourist has been arrested for “a hostile act.” The University of Virginia student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, was accused of entering the country with the intent of “bringing down the ...

By , a staff writer at Foreign Policy from 2015-2018.

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

BREAKING: The state-run North Korean media announced Friday that an American university student who had entered the country as a tourist has been arrested for “a hostile act.” The University of Virginia student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, was accused of entering the country with the intent of “bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. Reuters reports that Warmbier, 21, was detained at Pyongyang airport on Jan. 2 ahead of a flight back to China.

Nuke-free Jeb! Well, here’s a surprise. In a little-noticed moment from the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush found common cause with President Barack Obama’s long dream of a nuclear-free world. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Wednesday, flagged by FP’s John Hudson, Bush said, “I think there should be a goal of — an aspirational goal, a Reagan-esque goal if you will — of elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world…I think that is not a naive aspiration.” Bush’s remarks stand in pretty stark contrast with more recent GOP opponents of denuclearization, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and top lawmakers in Congress, including House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Sen. Jim Inhofe, (R-Okla.) a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hudson notes.

Clinton nukes Sanders. Another election year battle for the Democratic ticket has erupted in a big way between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with Team Clinton trying to beat back the momentum that Sanders has picked up, currently outpolling her in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

The heat was turned up after Sanders said recently that Washington should “move as aggressively as we can” to normalize relations with Iran. Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary told reporters Thursday that Sanders’ comments are little more than a “caricature that Republicans like to put forward” about how Democrats view the world, while Clinton slammed Sanders while stumping in Iowa.  FP’s Paul McLeary writes that this approach recalls similar attacks Clinton launched against then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2007, calling him “naive” for offering to meet without precondition with the leaders of Cuba, North Korea and Iran.

Bad scene. Sarah Palin’s freestyle performance earlier this week during her endorsement of Donald Trump for president drew plenty of attention. But what is drawing the ire of some vets are her comments appearing to blame President Barack Obama for her son’s PTSD, which led to his arrest for domestic violence on Jan. 18. FP’s Elias Groll nicely sums up some of more thoughtful tweets and comments from a few vets who have struggled with PTSD.

Serial recap, Centcom edition. This week was the drop date for the next installment of the “Serial” podcast series, which is now a bi-weekly event, leaving avid listeners waiting that much longer for the next bit of backstory on the Bowe Bergdahl saga. The first four episodes of Serial have focused on Bergdahl’s decision to desert his post in eastern Afghanistan and the years of harrowing torture he suffered after being snatched up by the Taliban. The newest installment isn’t as dramatic, but it details something just as disturbing: an atmosphere of indifference and hostility towards the missing soldier throughout much of the military command charged with bringing him back. FP’s Paul McLeary has the writeup here.

Dots and loops. U.S. judges will soon have to decide if Microsoft has to turn over data stored outside American borders, and privacy advocates see the case as one that could have far-reaching implications for the future of law enforcement in the digital age. The company “argues that compelling it to give U.S. prosecutors data from the Irish server could allow law enforcement authorities in an authoritarian state like China to demand the company turn over the emails of, for example, an overseas dissident group,” reports FP’s Elias Groll.

Winter is coming. Is it Thundersnowing or Snowmageddoning or Snowpocalypsing yet? Stay strong, East Coasters, break out the shovels and various beverages to help stay warm this weekend. We’ll see you on the other side.

It was a short week for us stateside, but there’s plenty to keep us busy. As you know, we can never get enough information, so if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ! Best way is to send them to [email protected] or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Guantanamo

The Pentagon’s efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay have been humming along, with Defense Secretary Ash Carter clearing 17 detainees for release in December. On Thursday, two prisoners were sent to live in the Balkans, but a cleared Yemeni prisoner named Mohammad Bwazir, 35, declined to leave, citing fears of not having any family in the country to which he was being dispatched. Of the 91 remaining prisoners at Gitmo, 34 are approved for release.

U.S. Army

In a blast from what seems like the distant past, the U.S. Army’s chief of staff says he’s looking at standing up advise and assist brigades to help train foreign militaries. “They would look a lot like the chains of command of units, brigades and battalions, they just wouldn’t have soldiers,” Gen. Mark Milley explained Thursday. The idea is that each combatant commander would be assigned one of these units, and they would be filled in by soldiers “on a day-to-day basis to train, advise and assist of foreign armies on behalf of the United States like what you see happening around the world today, things like you see happening in Afghanistan and Iraq today.”

Navy blues

For the second time in recent weeks, a U.S. Navy littoral combat ship (LCS) has pulled into port with serious machinery problems. This time it’s the USS Fort Worth, a Freedom-class LCS that has been plying the waters of the western Pacific for the past year. The ship “experienced a casualty to the ship’s combining gears during an in-port period in Singapore Jan. 12,” Lt. Cmdr. Matt Knight, a spokesman for the US Pacific Fleet, told Defense News. So far, Knight said, “the casualty appears to be caused by a failure to follow established procedures during maintenance.” Uh-oh.

War on ISIS

The U.S. has killed a total of 29 civilians in its war against the Islamic State, according to a scoop by the Daily Beast. The tally adds an additional 15 people killed — all adults — in 14 separate incidents in 2015 to previous reports. Those casualties took place in the context of roughly 65,000 sorties and 7,500 airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Pivoting to Japan

The Pentagon is sending about 1,100 new personnel and laying out $1 billion to deploy new C-130J aircraft and support facilities to Yokota Air Base in Japan. The new forces and equipment won’t all show up at once however, but will flow in over the next several years, accompanied by a new Special Operations Squadron who will bring along an additional 10 CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. Yokota already houses about 11,500 U.S. personnel.

Russia

Moscow is really stepping up its cyber warfare game, a top U.S. defense official said this week, and Washington is getting worried. “We have certainly seen the sophistication of cyber strikes improve over Estonia and Georgia, from rudimentary denial-of-service to…relatively sophisticated surgical effects,” said Robert Giesler, chief of strategy and plans in the secretary of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office. “We see cyber being increasingly used as a first-strike weapon by peer competitors as well as by non-peer competitors,” Giesler said, adding that non-military targets — like the Ukrainian power grid — are increasingly under attack.

The British government released a report on Thursday alleging what many have long suspected: the Russian government assassinated former FSB officer and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Litvinenko was killed, according to the report, by a dose of radioactive polonium slipped into his tea following a meeting with his former Russian intelligence colleagues, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmirti Kovtun. The report, written by retired British judge Sir Robert Owen, concludes that Putin likely personally approved the operation.

Israel

The Israel Defense Forces wrapped up a first of its kind war game this week, which pit its troops against foes fighting simultaneous wars on the Lebanese and Syrian fronts. Israeli officials said that the exercise was designed to simulate a fight against Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad terror group on two fronts. “The five-day ‘Turning Point 15’ drill also tested the country’s preparedness to attacks on essential infrastructure, as well as a cyber attack that brings down the electrical and telephone grids,” the Times of Israel notes.

Chad

Chadian troops are putting much of the muscle into the fight against Islamist militants in west African conflicts, the Wall Street Journal reports. Chadian soldiers have deployed alongside the French military in Mali as well as in the war against Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, adding a crucial reservoir of battle-tested troops. While Chad’s military has had success in individual battles against Boko Haram, it has also struggled to consolidate territorial gains against the jihadist group as liberated areas sometimes slip back into Islamist control.

Robot roundup

There’s a heap of drone news this week. Sikorsky and Carnegie Mellon carried out a ground-air drone mashup, getting a UH-60 Black Hawk to deliver and communicate with a Land Tamer  unmanned ground vehicle. Researchers converted the manned Black Hawk chopper into a drone and flew

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) would also like to have a drone with a laser that can blast enemy missiles out of the sky. MDA director Vice Adm. James Syring told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that he’d like a drone-borne laser to follow a cancelled Pentagon program which relied on a laser carried by a Boeing 747 (dubbed the “flying light saber”). The missile zapping drones would loiter high in the air near the launch site of  enemy missiles, waiting for a chance to zap them.

More and more U.S. Air Force drones are crashing, according to a Washington Post report, largely because of busted starter-generators on the service’s Reaper drones. The Post got a hold of Air Force crash data via a Freedom of Information Act request which showed that the service lost 20 drones in 2015 and busted up 10 Reapers. The crashes come at a time when U.S. commanders are increasingly demanding more drone coverage for the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Africa.

 

Paul McLeary was a staff writer at Foreign Policy from 2015-2018.

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