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Today's PDB includes a variety of critical, global national security issues.
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READ TODAY'S PDB BELOW:
NATIONAL SECURITY
China and Russia's military relationship likely to deepen with Ukraine war. Regardless of whether China becomes directly involved in Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the conflict is shaping up to be an important milestone in the two countries' military partnership, much like the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
COUNTERPOINT – Can China broker an end to Russia's war in Ukraine? They're longtime strategic partners but Russia's invasion of Ukraine is testing the strength of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping's relationship, Tania Branigan explains.
FECKLESS BIDEN – White House bureaucracy is costing Ukrainian lives, senators say. Lawmakers are urging Biden to send more aid and enforce sanctions as quickly as possible to help Ukraine beat Russia.
EU to establish rapid reaction force with up to 5,000 troops. EU foreign and defense ministers on Monday agreed a security strategy meant to boost the bloc's military clout when war has returned to Europe, establishing a rapid reaction force with up to 5,000 troops to be swiftly deployed in a crisis.
CHINA THREAT
GREAT – BUT WEREN'T THESE BANS ‘RACIST' When TRUMP DID THEM? US hits Chinese officials with travel bans over ‘repressive acts.' United States President Joe Biden's administration is imposing travel bans on Chinese officials whom it accuses of repressing Uighur Muslims, as well as other ethnic and religious minorities.
RUSSIA THREAT
WAR CRIMES – Biden says Putin is weighing use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. Russia's false accusations that Kyiv has biological and chemical weapons illustrate that Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering using them himself in his war against Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday.
ARE THE BALTICS NEXT? Russia may not stop with Ukraine – NATO looks to its weakest link. Hours after Russian missiles first struck Ukrainian cities on Feb. 24, German naval commander Terje Schmitt-Eliassen received notice to sail five warships under his command to the former Soviet Republic of Latvia to help protect the most vulnerable part of NATO's eastern flank.
US sending Soviet Air Defense Systems it secretly acquired to Ukraine. The systems, which one U.S. official said include the SA-8, are decades old and were obtained by the U.S. so it could examine the technology used by the Russian military and which Moscow has exported around the world.
EU nations circle the wagons in new ‘Strategic Compass.' Officials had hastened to rewrite the document since the war began in late February, replacing the diplomatic approach where a would-be adversary is unnamed with plain language painting Russia as an aggressor against its neighbor and as a threat to Europe.
PUTIN'S NEW LONG GAME – How the Russian military is starting to adapt in Ukraine. “They own the long clock,” a senior Ukrainian officer recently admitted. “We are calculating time not in weeks or days – but in lives.”
IRAN THREAT
BIDEN'S FINAL GIFT TO TEHRAN? Iran nuclear deal's final hurdle is lifting terrorism sanctions on Revolutionary Guards. The issue is galvanizing opposition to the nuclear deal in Washington and among allies like Israel, which criticized any attempt to remove the terrorism designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
OR IS BIDEN THE REASON? Russia-Ukraine war shows cracks in US ties to Middle East allies. The latest manifestation of this apparent rift came last week when the UAE hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite repeated warnings from Washington against normalizing ties with the government in Damascus. It was al-Assad's first visit to an Arab country since the Syrian war broke out in 2011, and it came weeks after the Syrian president expressed full support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
US MILITARY AND SPACE
OR CAUSE BIDEN SAYS THEY DON'T MATTER NOW – A sign of the times? DoD skips publishing weekly COVID-19 numbers. In a sign of the continued decline of COVID-19 across the country, the Defense Department last Wednesday skipped its update of coronavirus case numbers — data it faithfully has published weekly since July 2021.
FACING RUSSIA IN ALASKA – Soldiers integrate air defense for the first time in major Alaska exercise. The recent biennial, large-scale arctic warfighting exercise in Alaska that puts soldiers, airmen and a mix of the other services to the test defending the far north saw its own first — air defense integration.
END of PDB
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
