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Today's PDB includes a variety of critical national security issues.
READ TODAY'S PDB BELOW:
Pentagon Watch
Texas joins growing list of governors protesting National Guard vaccine mandate. A seventh Republican governor is asking Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reconsider COVID-19 vaccination requirements for National Guard members.
IS THIS LEGAL? Defense bill bans private funds for deploying National Guard. The annual bill also made landmark changes to the way the military handles sexual assaults, keeps women out of the draft and lays the groundwork for a new war memorial on the National Mall.
Washington Watch
PARTISAN WITCH HUNT CONTINUES – House Jan. 6 committee subpoenas retired Army colonel who worked for Trump's outside legal team. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob announced Thursday it had issued a subpoena to retired Army Col. Phil Waldron as it investigates the causes of the insurrection.
Homeland Security
BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS AT SEA – 100 people detained in human smuggling attempts off Florida coast from Sunday to Tuesday. The U.S. Coast Guard and federal immigration agencies stopped three human smuggling attempts and detained 100 people off Florida's coast from Sunday to Tuesday, the military branch said in a news release sent on Wednesday.
International Security
Norwegian vessel teams up with US carrier strike group, maintaining trend toward cooperation. A Norwegian navy warship is sailing alongside a group of American counterparts, and the cooperative deployment is the first ever between the two NATO allies.
France wants to transform its ‘beautiful' army for high-intensity warfare. Just as the U.S. military has come to understand that the “long wars” of Iraq and Afghanistan diverted forces from training for future full-spectrum peer-to-peer conflicts, the French military has been increasingly warning about the risks involved with two decades of heavy focus on overseas operations at the expense of incoming threats.
Biden's Afghanistan Disaster
DISGRACEFUL – More than 60,000 interpreters, visa applicants remain in Afghanistan. About 33,000 of those could be eligible for immediate evacuation, State Department says.
China Threat
CONGRESS, NOT BIDEN – US military spending grows as policy shifts to ‘prioritise China.' Months after U.S. President Joe Biden's administration pulled the last American troops out of Afghanistan as part of his promise to end the country's “forever wars”, the United States Congress approved a $777.7 billion defense budget, a five percent increase from last year.
Minot B-52s fly to Canada then Calif. to practice the bomber version of ACE. Preparing for conflict in the Pacific will require more than learning to fly fighters out of austere locations — it will also call for small bomber crews to go on quick consecutive missions to unfamiliar places.
Russia Threat
PUTIN'S REAL GOAL? Russia hands draft security pacts to US, expects quick talks. The Kremlin said Thursday that Russia submitted draft documents outlining security arrangements it wants to negotiate with the United States and its NATO allies amid spiraling tensions over Ukraine.
NATO signals support for Ukraine in face of threat from Russia. The military alliance stood by its promise to open a path to Ukrainian membership amid warnings from Western intelligence agencies that Moscow could soon begin a military incursion.
All-out war or ‘creeping occupation' among Putin options, says Ukraine MoD. Moscow's proposals were passed on to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried. There are two potential courses of action Putin could take — either all-out war or a “creeping occupation” of Ukraine, that nation's Ministry of Defense tells Military Times.
Swedish commander: US should add troops in Europe if Russia-Ukraine crisis deepens. Gen. Micael Bydén, the Swedish supreme commander, spoke to POLITICO Thursday amid a visit to Washington where he met with counterparts including Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Iran Threat
PREPARING FOR WAR? Iran more than doubles Revolutionary Guard's budget in FY22 bill. According to the legislation for fiscal 2022, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will receive 930 trillion rials (U.S. $22 billion). Last year, the force was given a budget of 403 trillion rials.
END of PDB
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
This piece doesn’t fulfill its promise to tell us what Putin’s “real goals” are; only that he has approximately three options. Well, we knew that.
In my view, it would be extremely damaging to Russia for Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine now. (Body bags coming home to Moskva and Smolensk, blood on TV news, crying orphans, smoking ruins, extra sanctions, economic cost, etc.) But he wants the West to BELIEVE that he intends to invade, in order to extract concessions in exchange for not doing what he really does not intend to do anyway. It’s one thing to beat up on tiny Georgia or rebels in the Caucasus; quite another to attack a nation of 44 million people that (thanks to Donald Trump) is much better equipped now than it was in 2014.
To the extent that Putin’s “real goal” is to keep Ukraine out of NATO, his saber-rattling seems to be having the opposite effect, as NATO nations perceive a substantially greater need for Ukraine’s membership in NATO to defend against Russian aggression than would have been the case a year ago.
Seems pretty accurate to me. I’ve heard around town (in DC) that Putin really wants the territory up to the Dnieper river – but I’ve also heard from sources in Ukraine that the situation is far more complicated than that. Ultimately, Putin doesn’t want to be surrounded on all sides by enemies – which is a reasonable security standpoint – but the question is how far will Putin go, and how much security will he risk now to secure a perceived future of inviolable borders? It’s anyone’s guess, I suppose…