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Presented by Lockheed Martin: From the SitRoom to the E-Ring, the inside scoop on defense, national security and foreign policy. | | | | |  | | By Nahal Toosi, Andrew Desiderio, Alexander Ward and Quint Forgey | Presented by Lockheed Martin | | 
Sen. Bob Menendez speaks during a hearing on December 08, 2021 in Washington, D.C. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | With help from Paul McLeary Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Quint Now that top Biden administration officials concede Russia is likely to invade Ukraine again, the biggest question roiling Washington is whether crushing sanctions would be most useful now — before troops and tanks roll over the border — or after an incursion as punishment. That fiery debate is the reason congressional action is stalled. American Russia hawks, most Republicans, and Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY are firmly on the “do it yesterday!” side. “Why do you need sanctions after we lose the whole territory of Ukraine?” Zelenskyy asked rhetorically in a recent Washington Post interview. The Biden administration should punish Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN just “for having caused this trauma to all of us,” said EVELYN FARKAS, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration. “He’s not going to go away. We just have to contain him.” Hawks tell NatSec Daily that the White House should hit Putin now with a mix of sanctions, export controls, or leaks of embarrassing information. Only a firm hit on the nose will make Putin crawl away in shame, they say. Arguing hard against this approach are top Biden administration officials and most Democrats on Capitol Hill. “The purpose of those sanctions is to deter Russian aggression. And so, if they're triggered now, you lose the deterrent effect,” Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN told CNN’s DANA BASH Sunday on “State of the Union.” Lining up the sanctions alongside European allies, and not deploying them right this second, “is designed to factor into President Putin’s calculus.” Furthermore, not sanctioning Putin now could allow him to back off without looking like he's the losing party. Slinking away after the West imposed some sanctions would make him look weak. EDWARD FISHMAN , who coordinated sanctions policy toward Russia at the State Department from 2015 to 2017, said Blinken et al. have it right. “If the U.S. were to impose major sanctions now, the Kremlin would likely assess that sanctions are inevitable — they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t — reducing the deterrent effect and increasing the likelihood of a military offensive,” he told NatSec Daily. That’s not to say the administration is standing pat. The White House has already endorsed Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair BOB MENENDEZ ’s (D-N.J.) “mother of all sanctions” legislation — a slate of unprecedented financial penalties that would kick in only after a Russian invasion. Even though the Senate is on recess this week, Menendez is talking with Republicans in the hopes of having a bipartisan bill ready to go by the time lawmakers return next week. Fishman said making the Menendez bill law would help Biden in his quest to fend off Putin. “One of the biggest risks right now is that Putin could misjudge America’s willingness to impose major sanctions. Such misperception could embolden Putin to act. If the Biden administration’s hands were tied — in other words, if they were legally bound to impose major sanctions in the event of an invasion — the likelihood of misperception would be greatly reduced, and the deterrent effect enhanced,” he continued. So far, though, Menendez hasn’t brokered a breakthrough across the aisle. Republicans overwhelmingly want to impose sanctions now while Putin threatens an invasion, and ratchet them up if necessary — or, if Putin retreats, scale them back. “If you just threaten sanctions and then they invade,” Sen. JONI ERNST (R-Iowa) told NatSecDaily, “by that point, lives have already been lost — Russian, Ukrainian, and who knows who else. It allows Putin to gain territory. How do you push him out of territory? And you can never get those lives back.” “Putin only responds to power and strength. Right now he sees the United States as weak,” added Ernst, an Armed Services Committee member and a combat veteran. “The idea that preemptive sanctions take away future sanctions — that’s a false premise. You can always continue to escalate sanctions and make it much harder on the Russians.” At least one Democrat agrees. Sen. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-Conn.) told us last week that “we should impose those sanctions sooner rather than later, not wait for the invasion to start.” To be clear, the preemptive punishment crowd isn’t necessarily arguing that Biden should impose all of the economic sanctions he has at his disposal, or that he use that tool in particular. The point is to make it clear to Putin he can’t extort the world, or, at the very least, just to send a warning shot, some former U.S. officials and others say. ANTHONY GARDNER, a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union during the Obama administration, said the United States should make “asymmetric” moves against Putin now. He suggested publishing the names of Russian soldiers who died in Russia’s previous invasion of Ukraine, as well as information about corruption at the highest levels of the Russian administration. “We should embarrass him,” Gardner said. “He’s rattling our cage — we should be rattling his cage.” But even that has its risks: Putin may feel angry and compelled to respond by invading. Biden administration officials instead point to what they have done, including increasing military assistance to Ukraine and shoring up support for NATO allies while signaling to Russia how bad the sanctions could be should he send in troops. LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD , the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, weighed in on this punitive-versus-preventative sanctions debate in a news briefing Monday, telling reporters: “The sanctions that we have now announced will be punitive. But the fact of announcing those sanctions and letting the Russians know in advance that we will use such sanctions hopefully will be preventative.” | | | | JOIN FRIDAY TO HEAR FROM GOVERNORS ACROSS AMERICA : As we head into the third year of the pandemic, state governors are taking varying approaches to public health measures including vaccine and mask mandates. "The Fifty: America's Governors" is a series of live conversations featuring various governors on the unique challenges they face as they take the lead and command the national spotlight in historic ways. Learn what is working and what is not from the governors on the front lines, REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | LATVIA RESPONDS: While there are “no concrete plans” just yet for the U.S. to send troops to buttress his country’s defenses, Latvian Defense Minister ARTIS PABRIKS told PAUL MCLEARY Monday afternoon that it was clear the Baltic nation would welcome the help. “Establishing an American footprint on Latvia could be done basically overnight,” he said, given the U.S. presence in nearby Germany. While negotiations are ongoing within NATO and Washington about how best to reinforce the alliance’s Baltic allies, Pabriks said his country and his neighbors are clear-eyed about the threat Moscow potentially poses, and how important it is for NATO to speak with one voice. “We are very much concerned about real war and the of invasion of Ukraine, and if Putin follows the pattern of Nazi Germany, for instance, and tries to make an Anschluss of Donbas and Luhansk, that would be a very huge step forward. So what would be the Western reaction on such an occasion? I think it still is unanswered,” Pabriks said. He pointed to the reluctance of the German government to back the arming of Ukraine, noting how “if we really want balanced capabilities, a balanced capacity, and balanced payments within the NATO system, Germany has to change its mindset.” “I understand that many German politicians hearing this from me will be extremely angry, but things have changed dramatically in the last decade. What maybe was suitable for Germany just 10 or 20 years ago doesn't suit [Europe] anymore. We need the Germans more on board.” Latvia recently pledged to send Stinger ground-to-air missiles to Ukraine, and is discussing possibly sending a company of soldiers to join France if Macron’s government follows through on the suggestion it may send troops to Romania to bolster the Black Sea ally. If Russia moves against Latvia, however, Pabriks suggested his country would be ready to fight what amounts to an insurgency. “We will follow the pattern that Finland showed us in 1939,” referring to the famous Winter War after the Soviet Union invaded without warning. “We will never fall again, and we are ready to defend every meter of our land.” NATO SENDING EQUIPMENT TO EASTERN FLANK: NATO is taking no chances as Russian troops move westward, as the alliance announced Monday it would send more ships and jets to Eastern Europe. “Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic Sea and is set to deploy four F-16 fighter jets to Lithuania in support of NATO’s long-standing air-policing mission in the region. Spain is sending ships to join NATO naval forces and is considering sending fighter jets to Bulgaria. France has expressed its readiness to send troops to Romania under NATO command. The Netherlands is sending two F-35 fighter aircraft to Bulgaria from April to support NATO’s air-policing activities in the region, and is putting a ship and land-based units on standby for NATO’s Response Force,” NATO said in a released statement. “I welcome Allies contributing additional forces to NATO,” the alliance’s Secretary General JENS STOLTENBERG said in the news release. “NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all Allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the Alliance. We will always respond to any deterioration of our security environment, including through strengthening our collective defence.” Pentagon spokesperson JOHN KIRBY told reporters that a "range of units"across the United States — amounting to around 8,500 personnel — have been placed on a “heightened preparedness to deploy” to contribute to a NATO response force. “We’ve never ruled out the option of providing additional assistance in advance of an invasion,” White House press secretary JEN PSAKI said in her daily news conference Monday. U.S. COULD USE EXPORT CONTROLS TO HARM RUSSIAN INDUSTRIES: The Biden administration might enact some export controls to harm Russian industry — and keep smartphones out of Russian hands — should Moscow move to invade Ukraine again. The Washington Post’s ELLEN NAKASHIMA and JEANNE WHALEN report that the novel weapon under consideration is known as the “foreign direct product rule,” which the United States previously used to sink Huawei’s profits. “The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule,” Nakashima and Whalen write. “The power of these export controls is we can degrade and atrophy the capacity of these sectors to become a key source of growth for the Russian economy,” an unnamed senior administration official told them. CHINA SCRAMBLES WARPLANES NEAR TAIWAN: China sent dozens of fighter jets on sorties Sunday and Monday near Taiwan, per The Wall Street Journal’s JOYU WANG — the most intense flurry of activity since October. Beijing launched 39 warplanes Sunday, “including two dozen J-16 fighter jets and a nuclear-capable H-6 bomber,” Wang writes, and 13 warplanes Monday, with 10 J-16s among them. The exercise comes as the United States has two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Philippine Sea alongside Japanese vessels. A senior Taiwanese official, who spoke to NatSec Daily on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said it’s possible China will launch a massive and provocative exercise around the democratic island toward the end of the year. Beijing will send an aircraft carrier or two near Taiwan and fly even more warplanes nearby, the official said, adding: “They’re watching what Russia is doing in Ukraine and will say it’s a routine exercise.”
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| ANOTHER HOUTHI ATTACK ON ABU DHABI: The United Arab Emirates is saying it intercepted a pair of ballistic missiles early Monday that Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired toward Abu Dhabi, per The Associated Press’ JON GAMBRELL. The state-run WAM news agency reported that the missile fragments fell over the Emirati capital without causing harm, although the attack disrupted traffic into Abu Dhabi International Airport for roughly an hour. A Houthi military spokesperson took credit for the attack in a televised statement. Later Monday, U.S. Central Command said American forces at Al Dhafra Air Base, near Abu Dhabi, “engaged two inbound missile threats with multiple Patriot interceptors coincident to efforts by the armed forces of the UAE in the early morning hours of Jan. 24, 2022.” “The combined efforts successfully prevented both missiles from impacting the base. There were no U.S. casualties,” the statement continued. The latest missile fire comes after the Houthis claimed a drone attack on an oil facility in Abu Dhabi that killed three people last week. In response, a Saudi-led coalition backed by the UAE launched an airstrike that hit a Houthi-run prison and which the rebels said killed more than 80 detainees. COUP IN BURKINA FASO:Burkina Faso’s army declared Monday that it had “ousted President ROCH KABORE, suspended the constitution, dissolved the government and the national assembly, and closed the country's borders,” per Reuters’ THIAM NDIAGA. Soldiers in the small West African country have been “demanding more support for their fight against Islamist militants,” and street protests have erupted in recent months “amid frustration over killings of civilians and soldiers by militants,” Ndiaga writes. The army’s statement “was made in the name of a previously unheard-of entity, the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration, or MPSR, its French-language acronym.” The MPSR “said it would propose a calendar for a return to constitutional order ‘within a reasonable time frame, after consultations with various sections of the nation.’” ASSANGE CAN APPEAL U.S. EXTRADITION: WikiLeaks founder JULIAN ASSANGE is now able to appeal to the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court to block his extradition to the United States, per BBC News’ DOMINIC CASCIANI. The United Kingdom’s High Court previously ruled last December that Assange could be extradited to the United States after U.S. officials provided assurances that he would be treated humanely. But on Monday, the High Court’s Lord Chief Justice IAN BURNETT “said Mr Assange’s case had raised a legal question over the circumstances in which judges received and considered assurances from the [United States] about how he would be treated in prison,” Casciani writes. Still, Assange “has no guarantee of a hearing despite being able to petition the Supreme Court,” and the latest ruling essentially means “his case may take many more months to come to a conclusion.” | | | |   | | | | MORE ELECTION STRENGTH AT CISA: Our own SAM SABIN and ERIC GELLER report in Weekly Cybersecurity that MONA HARRINGTON, who has led the Election Assistance Commission since 2019, is joining the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as the deputy assistant director of the National Risk Management Center. Why does this news matter, and why isn’t it in the “Transitions” section we all know and love, you ask? We’ll let Sabin explain: “Some election security experts have been pushing lawmakers for years to transfer some of the EAC’s work to CISA. MATT MASTERSON , who served as an EAC commissioner before leading CISA’s election security program, told the House Homeland Security Committee last week that Congress should transfer the EAC’s voting system certification program to CISA, cementing the latter agency’s role as the ‘technical lead’ for election security while freeing up the EAC to ‘focus on everything else,’ from grants to poll worker training. ‘The EAC is small and has limited resources,’ he said, while ‘CISA [is] much larger.’”
| IT’S EARNINGS SEASON: Our own BRYAN BENDER notes in Morning Defense (for Pros!) that it’s once again time for defense contractors to report their fourth-quarter earnings. “Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies are set to go Tuesday, while Boeing and General Dynamics report their fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Northrop Grumman will deliver its report to investors on Thursday,” Bender writes. BYRON CALLAN, managing director at Capital Alpha Partners, told our own LEE HUDSON that a big question for this quarter is how the slowdown in supply chains will impact the industry’s financial projections for the first half of 2022. ROMAN SCHWEIZER, managing director at Cowen’s Washington Research Group, also told Hudson that he’ll be looking for lingering supply chain problems. SOCOM CHIEF TESTS POSITIVE: Gen. RICHARD CLARKE, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, has tested positive for Covid-19, SOCOM spokesperson Col. CURT KELLOGG said in a statement. Clarke, who has gotten the vaccine and booster, will now work remotely. He has mild symptoms, Kellogg said, adding: “Gen. Clarke has not been in the physical presence of senior DoD civilian leadership or members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff this month.”
| UKRAINE AMBASSADOR PICK 'COMING': NatSec Daily has asked a bunch of congressional staffers if they have any indication of whether a Ukraine ambassador pick is imminent. The most concrete thing we heard, after speaking with Republicans and Democrats, is that the announcement “is coming,” per one aide. No one could provide us with a timeframe, however. NatSec Daily reported on the mystery of the missing Ukraine ambassador earlier this month, and we’ve gotten no closer to solving it. We asked the White House on Monday morning when the choice will be made — especially with Russia threatening to invade soon — but we never heard back. Psaki, when asked the same question today, said “I don’t have any update on the status at this time.”
| EU SPLITS WITH U.S. ON EMBASSY DEPARTURES: JOSEP BORRELL, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, offered an implicit criticism of the United States’ move to begin emptying its diplomatic missions in Ukraine, saying the EU would not follow suit because he does not want to “dramatise” tensions with Russia. The United States is now ordering the relatives of American embassy staffers in Ukraine to leave the country, while giving certain diplomats the option to depart, as our own NICK NIEDZWIADEK, NAHAL TOOSI and MAEVE SHEEHEY reported over the weekend. But Borrell, arriving Monday at a meeting in Brussels with his EU counterparts, told reporters : “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, responded to the differing embassy orders at a news briefing. “Our responsibility is to protect American citizens, and this is nothing new for us,” she said. “We always lead generally in these actions. I’m sure these other countries are weighing what security risks their people face, should there be a Russian invasion, and they may have to make a decision when it’s time to withdraw their people. We’ve decided it’s time for us to do that.”
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Information is the battlespace advantage. F-35 sensor fusion provides vast amounts of information to accelerate critical decisions and win the fight. Learn More | | | USAID CONTRACTORS SLAM AGENCY OVER AFGHANISTAN: As the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, the U.S. Agency for International Development was both silent and absent, leading contractors working in the country to wonder what would happen to locally employed staff, per The Intercept’s ALICE SPERI. In emails and recorded calls shared with Speri, “Afghans who worked on USAID projects talked with growing desperation about not having the money to feed their families and about their fears of being targeted by the Taliban for having worked with the U.S. government. ‘Sometimes, I feel regret working for the U.S.,’ one of them wrote, adding that he was hiding in Kabul after the Taliban had repeatedly visited his family looking for him. ‘Please do not leave us behind.’” “We still don’t have any guidance,” one contractor repeatedly told Afghan staff on a call last year. “We’ve been asking these questions since August.… I am just sorry.” “What can I say to them?” that contractor later told Speri. “‘We have failed you in every single way?’’’ NatSec Daily previously reported in November about the growing rift between contractors and USAID over funding and guidance after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
| — MATTHEW LUXMOORE is joining The Wall Street Journal as a Moscow-based reporter focused on Russian national defense and security policy. He previously was a Moscow correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
| — FIONA HILL, The New York Times: “ Opinion: Putin Has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It” — MATTHEW S. SCHWARTZ, NPR: “ Who is Yevheniy Murayev, the man the U.K. says Russia wants to install in Ukraine?” — JONATHAN GUYER, Vox: “ Biden Promised a Harder Line on Saudi Arabia. Why Can’t He Deliver?”
| — The Atlantic Council, 9 a.m.: “ Russia’s Six Scenarios for a New Ukraine Invasion — with MELINDA HARING, JOHN HERBST, MICHAEL KOFMAN, JOHN SIPHER and ANDRIY ZAGORODNYUK” — The Business Council for International Understanding, 9:30 a.m.: “ Virtual Roundtable with Hon. SCOTT MILLER, Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein” — The Middle East Institute, 11 a.m.: “ Borderlands: Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East — with RAFFAELLA A. DEL SARTO, RAMI KHOURI, ROBERT SPRINGBORG and INTISSAR FAKIR” — The Nuclear Threat Initiative, 11 a.m.: “ From Cyber Attack to Nuclear War: Avoiding Escalation through Cooperation — with ERNEST MONIZ and CHRISTOPHER PAINTER” — Chatham House, 12 p.m.: “ Towards a Vision for Transatlantic Digital Cooperation — with SUSAN ARIEL AARONSON, RHYS BOWEN, ANU BRADFORD, CASPER KLYNGE and ROBIN NIBLETT” — The Hudson Institute, 12 p.m.: “ Countering China’s Human Rights Abuses: A Conversation with BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY — with NURY TURKEL” — The Miller Center, 12:30 p.m.: “ Perspectives From Pakistan: A Conversation With Ambassador ASAD M. KHAN — with STEPHEN MULL and IAN H. SOLOMON” — The Israel Policy Forum, 2 p.m.: “ The Growing Threat of Settler Violence — with JACOB MAGID” — The Wilson Center, 2 p.m.: “ Tenth Annual U.S.-Mexico Security Conference Part 1 — with CRAIG DEARE, CECILIA FARFÁN-MÉNDEZ, IÑIGO GUEVARA, CELINA REALUYO, TODD D. ROBINSON, ANDREW I. RUDMAN and EARL ANTHONY WAYNE” — The Center for a New American Security, 2:30 p.m.: “ Dealing with a Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan — with MIKE WALTZ, RICHARD FONTAINE, FAWZIA KOOFI, MATIN BEK, LISA CURTIS, KELLEY CURRIE” — The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 3 p.m.: “ The U.S.-China Strategic Competition: Beyond the Rhetoric — with CHARLES HOOPER”
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