Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Grim news broke this morning that Russian security services have detained a Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, on what the paper called falsified espionage charges. Gershkovich is the first American reporter detained in Russia on espionage charges since 1986, another sign of Moscow’s back-to-the-future regression to Soviet-era repression.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Pentagon’s warfighting commands want more cash, Belarus is playing host to Russian nuclear weapons, and an inside look at Europe’s east-west divide that’s driving Ukraine policy.
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Batter up. Welcome to posture season, the U.S. Defense Department budget equivalent to Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. Happy first pitch, to all those who celebrate.
It’s the time when the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the U.S. Defense Department’s warfighting and functional commands all come back to Congress, hat in hand, and ask lawmakers for more money that the Biden administration didn’t put in the budget.
But the wish lists total billions of dollars, more than $24 billion for fiscal year 2023, and some lawmakers are getting tired of the act, which they equate to money grubbing. They’re trying to kill the requirement for different branches of the Pentagon to send over requests for extra cash, and for the first time ever, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the e-ring brass are on board with the idea.
Where’s the money, Lebowski? To the point, SitRep laid eyes on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s nearly $3.5 billion request, which landed on Capitol Hill last week.
At first glance, it’s filled with big-ticket items: nearly $500 million for sea-based Tomahawk precision standoff weapons, $275 million for space defense, $184 million to pay for offensive cyberoperations, $147 million to fund missile defenses on Guam (especially urgent since China’s Dong Feng-26 missile that can reach targets 3,400 miles from the mainland is nicknamed the “Guam killer”), and $131 million to plan and build more periodic bases to enhance the U.S. military footprint in the region.
Head-scratcher. But then the Hawaii-based command’s request gets a little confusing. INDOPACOM is asking for $511 million for “campaigning,” a poorly understood Pentagon jargon term that Austin himself has described as “working to limit and disrupt malign activities by our competitors.”
OK, experts say, but that’s still a head-scratcher. Is this about peacetime deterrence of China, and if so, how does it align with long-term efforts to build up U.S. military allies in the region? (For what it’s worth, INDOPACOM describes campaigning as money to “quickly mass forces multiple times a year” for operations in the western Pacific and Indian oceans.)
“You have items that are too vague to be useful,” Becca Wasser, a senior fellow and head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security, said in a text message.
Naughty or nice. The Pentagon is reconsidering the “merits of the approach” of military wish lists, Pentagon money man Michael McCord wrote in a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the chief critics of the idea, that was obtained by CQ Roll Call. Warren had a bill late in the last Congress, co-sponsored by a bipartisan tag team of three other senators, to try to end the unfunded lists.
And the phenomenon—which dates back to the mid-1990s—goes way beyond INDOPACOM. For instance, the U.S. Air Force wants $2.5 billion more to, in part, accelerate deliveries of a next-generation battle management and command-and-control plane, leaving experts wondering if all of this financial juicing is a service to the game of budget baseball.
“[L]ike all things, you have to ask the question of why it wasn’t in the budget in the first place?” Wasser said. “Is this an area of disagreement with the building? Was it not a true priority when it should have been? Or is this an area where INDOPACOM knows Congress will follow through on funding so it’s a way to double dip?”
Stealing bases. OK, it’s not entirely related, but sticking to our baseball theme here, SitRep editor Keith Johnson is not a fan of theft on the basepaths. “You need a 70 percent success rate to break even,” he wrote us. “This is a hill I will die on.” Many apologies to stolen base king and Oakland Athletics great Rickey Henderson, holder of the all-time steal record, whose picture just fell off of Jack’s living room wall.
U.S. President Joe Biden has tapped three new ambassador nominees, all from the ranks of career diplomats. Herro Mustafa Garg, fresh off duty as U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, is Biden’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to Egypt. Former State Department spokesman Mark Toner is being tapped as U.S. ambassador to Liberia. And Richard Riley is the administration’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to Somalia.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s military nominations machine, which is usually quickly rubber-stamped by Congress, is hitting a major speed bump: Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn University football coach, is holding up 160 military promotions over the Pentagon funding out-of-state travel for service members to get abortions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the holdup will create a “ripple effect” through the military.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
DEFCON2. Belarus confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to host Russian tactical nuclear weapons on its soil. Minsk is calling it an effort to respond to NATO military buildups near its borders, including what Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko termed an American-led plot to overthrow his government, citing no actual evidence.
The deployment, which is not pegged to a specific date yet, represents a significant deepening of the already-extensive military relationship between Minsk and Moscow.
The I-told-you-so hangover. Eastern European countries warned Western Europe for years about the dangers of a militarily revanchist Russia. That all came to a head with the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine last February. Now, a year later, Europe is grappling with the fallout from growing rifts between Western and Eastern European allies. FP’s reporting staff, including yours truly, dive deep on the east-west tension that is driving the closed-door fight over Ukraine aid.
Tsai-ve to survive. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is on American soil. Addressing the Taiwanese community in New York on Wednesday, she thanked the United States for sending military aid Taiwan’s way amid Chinese saber-rattling.
Tsai is expected to meet with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in California and give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library next week, after visiting Guatemala and Belize. China has warned that the meeting with McCarthy could have a serious ripple effect on already-tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro waves to fans at the Liberal Party’s headquarters in Brasilia on his return to Brazil on March 30 following three months of self-imposed exile in the United States after losing his reelection bid. Myke Sena/Getty Images
“This is not a First Amendment issue, cause we’re not trying to ban booty videos.”
—Sen. Marco Rubio chimes into the debate over a bid to ban the Chinese-owned video app TikTok. The ban stalled in the Senate, but the message from anti-TikTok lawmakers is this: Post your behinds on other platforms, people.
Friday, March 31: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s trip in Africa continues with a visit to Zambia, which was one of the co-hosts of the U.S.-led Summit for Democracy earlier this week.
Saturday, April 1: Russia is set to assume the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, despite the world body calling on Russian troops to leave Ukraine in a nonbinding resolution last month. And no, that’s not an April Fool’s joke.
“This is not about the north or the south. It’s between what’s right and wrong.”
—Kenyan President William Ruto becomes one of the first leaders in the global south to speak out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an interview with Deutsche Welle this week. Ruto also called out the West for largely ignoring the global south.
Cool guys don’t look at explosions. Respect to this couple still enjoying their wine with a medium-sized fire in the background amid France’s anti-pension reform protests. If you’ve ever seen a more French thing than that, let us know—we sure haven’t.
