Biden to pitch $715 billion defense budget today
April 9, 2021With Connor O’Brien and Jacqueline Feldscher
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— President Joe Biden is expected to request $715 billion for the Pentagon as hawks and progressives battle over numbers.
— Democrats want the Pentagon to level with the public on how many troops are deployed overseas and other data that the Trump administration hid.
— A new assessment reveals how Russia has blocked international accountability for the illegal use of chemical weapons.
HAPPY FRIDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING DEFENSE, on the 156th anniversary of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House to end the Civil War — Lee donning his dress uniform and sword, Grant wearing his muddy soldier’s coat. Grant’s two-volume memoir remains our favorite of all presidents. He did, after all, have the help of his friend and former congressional staffer Mark Twain. “The most confident critics,” Grant wrote, “are generally those who know the least about the matter criticised.” We’re always on the lookout for tips, pitches and feedback. Email us at [email protected], and follow on Twitter @bryandbender, @morningdefense and @politicopro.
’A CLEAN BREAK’: House Democrats are urging Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to expand public access to troves of Pentagon information, including details of U.S. troop levels in war zones, our colleague Connor O’Brien reports for Pros. Doing so, they contend, would help “make a clean break from the damaging policies of the Trump administration.”
“At a time when public trust in the U.S. military has diminished, we believe that DOD has an important opportunity under your leadership to begin to rebuild its relationship with Congress and the American people,” Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to Austin.
The trio called for Austin to restore public access to information such as troop levels in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; metrics on the effectiveness of Afghan security forces; stats on enemy attacks in Afghanistan; and assessments of the Taliban’s territorial control.
They also urged the Pentagon to increase public access to congressionally mandated, unclassified reports.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and Bob Work of the National Security Commission on AI are scheduled to brief Pentagon reporters at 9 a.m.
The Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition will hit Capitol Hill beginning Monday for a weeklong series of virtual meetings in which suppliers will pitch the value of the industrial base to their members of Congress.
BUDGET OUTLINE TODAY: The White House is set to release the first details of its fiscal 2022 budget proposal, including administration priorities and funding levels for federal agencies.
Biden is expected to request $715 billion for the Pentagon, up from last year’s $704 billion but still down from the $722 billion projected in Trump’s final budget, Andrew Desiderio and Connor report for Pros. The number does not include Energy Department spending for nuclear weapons.
The proposal is unlikely to please lawmakers to Biden’s right or left. Hawkish Republicans have urged the administration to seek a 3 to 5 percent increase that matches what Trump’s Pentagon argued is needed to adequately counter China and Russia. Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, want a sizable cut to defense spending that can be reinvested in other federal programs.
A number of groups from across the political that are seeking to reign in what they see as wasteful spending issued critical statements late Thursday. "From endless wars to excessive acquisitions to unneeded and outdated infrastructure, the U.S. defense budget is a prime place where a tide of irresponsible spending can be stemmed," said Nathan Anderson, executive director of the Concerned Veterans for America.
Erica Fein, advocacy director for the liberal Win Without War, said that "throwing money at the Pentagon does not keep us safe from modern day threats" called it "unconscionable to not only extend Trump’s spending spree, but to add to it."
No more war ‘slush fund’? Bloomberg, which got the scoop on the new topline, also reported that the much-vilified separate fund to finance overseas military operations may finally be history. “In a change from previous administrations, Biden will also forgo labeling funding for current military operations as ‘overseas contingency operations’ or OCO, according to one official. Lawmakers from both parties have criticized OCO as a ‘slush fund’ of money that should be spent as part of the regular Pentagon budget.”
A more complete spending plan that includes both discretionary and mandatory spending and tax proposals is due later in the spring.
Related: Service chiefs versus combatant commanders, via RealClear Defense.
UPDATE ON LANDMINES: Biden plans to roll back the Trump-era policy expanding the use of landmines after all, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council on Thursday, Connor reports for Pros.
“Now, there has been some discussion of the previous administration’s landmine policy this week, so let me speak plainly: President Biden has been clear that he intends to roll back this policy, and our administration has begun a policy review to do just that,” she said in remarks on a discussion on mine action.
The administration faced some criticism this week after the Pentagon defended their use.
FIRST LOOK — ‘WILL NOT REMAIN A DEMOCRACY’: A warning out today in Foreign Affairs from a trio of leading scholars on civil-military relations pulls no punches on the state of civilian control of the military: It is seriously eroding to the point where it threatens democracy itself.
“Senior military officers may still follow orders and avoid overt insubordination, but their influence has grown, while oversight and accountability mechanisms have faltered,” write Risa Brooks, a professor at Marquette University; Jim Golby, a retired Army officer and senior fellow at the University of Texas at Austin; and retired Army Col. Heidi Urben, who teaches at Georgetown University.
They also assert that having two retired generals recently serve as secretary of Defense has caused further damage, arguing that “military service is becoming a litmus test for Pentagon policy jobs traditionally held by civilians, and this is true even at lower levels.”
“Without robust civilian oversight of the military,” they warn, “the United States will not remain a democracy or a global power for long.”
FUTURAMA: It’s crystal ball time for the nation’s top intelligence analysts, and the outlook is decidedly grim in a number of ways, according to Global Trends 2040, published on Thursday by the Strategic Futures Group at the National Intelligence Council.
“Shared global challenges — including climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions — are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country,” it says. These transnational challenges are also “compounded in part by increasing fragmentation within communities, states, and the international system.”
The report also lays out a series of scenarios that could emerge over the next two decades, some better than others — from a “renaissance of democracies,” to “competitive coexistence” in which war among major powers is low, to a “world adrift” where global problems and conflicts go unaddressed.
But the future is not written. “These dynamics are not fixed in perpetuity,” the authors write, and much depends “on how these dynamics interact and human choices along the way.”
FIRST LOOK — DEADLY OBSTRUCTION: Russia has effectively rendered toothless the international body tasked with policing outlawed chemical weapons, allowing Moscow and ally Syria to get away with using poison as state policy. That’s according to a new assessment of the voting behavior of the 193-member Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established to police the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“Russia’s obstruction has hindered OPCW efforts to investigate Moscow’s use of a military-grade chemical nerve agent called Novichok to poison enemies of the state,” says a new study by Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Since 2013, Russia has also tried to block investigations into the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.”
Russia and its allies have also prevented the international watchdog from carrying out its basic duties. “Moscow and the countries that vote with it have attempted to prevent the OPCW from tending to basic organizational business such as passing annual budgets, agendas, and programs of work,” the report says.
Related: A chance to stop Syria and Russia from using chemical weapons, via Foreign Policy.
Robert Harward, a retired vice admiral and former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command and the National Counter Terrorism Center, has joined the board of advisers of Michael Best Strategies.
— U.S. defense secretary to visit Israel, Germany, NATO headquarters, UK: Reuters
— Space Force unveils plans for Space Systems Command: C4ISRNet
— U.S. considering sending warships to Black Sea amid Russia-Ukraine tensions: CNN
— Russia moves warships to Black Sea for drills: Reuters
— Commerce restricts trade with seven Chinese supercomputing entities: POLITICO Pro
— A look inside the military’s conversation about extremism in uniform: The War Horse
— ISIS chief was a prison informer in Iraq for U.S., records show: The Washington Post
— Why is it so tough to withdraw from Afghanistan: War on the Rocks
— Charles Coolidge, oldest Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 99: The New York Times
Source: https://www.politico.com/