Russia Missing from Trump’s Top Defense Priorities, According to DoD Memo

Meanwhile, Pentagon brass say Moscow is the No. 1 threat to the United States.

By John Hudson, Paul McLeary, Dan De Luce
December 20, 2016

A Pentagon memo outlining the incoming Trump administration’s top
“defense priorities” identifies defeating the Islamic State,
eliminating budget caps, developing a new cybersecurity strategy, and
finding greater efficiencies as the president-elect’s primary concerns.
But the memo, obtained by Foreign Policy, does not include any mention
of Russia, which has been identified by senior military officials as
the No. 1 threat to the United States.

“People there now would be pretty concerned to see Russia not on the
list,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Pentagon official who worked
on Russia policy before leaving in 2015.

For years, top cabinet officials at the Defense Department and the
intelligence community cited Russia as the foremost threat because of
its vast nuclear arsenal, sophisticated cyber capabilities, recently
modernized military, and willingness to challenge the United States and
its allies in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and other regions.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will
remain in that role after Trump takes office Jan. 20, told Congress
last year that no other threat is more serious.

“If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential
threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,” Dunford told
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If you look at their behavior,
it’s nothing short of alarming.” He listed China, North Korea, and the
Islamic State as the next biggest threats, in that order.

The memo, dated Dec. 1, was written by Acting Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy Brian McKeon to employees in his office. In it, McKeon said
the four-point list of priorities was conveyed to him by Mira Ricardel,
a former Bush administration official and co-leader of Trump’s Pentagon
transition team.

Besides placing an emphasis on budgetary issues, “force strength,” and
counterterrorism in Iraq and Syria, the memo noted other briefings
between the Defense Department and the Trump transition team on China
and North Korea. But Russia was not mentioned.

A Trump transition official declined to say where Russia fits into the
president-elect’s defense priorities, but said the memo is “not
comprehensive.”

“For the media to speculate that this list of issues represents all of
the president-elect’s priorities is completely erroneous and
misleading,” said Jessica Ditto, a transition spokeswoman.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the incoming Trump
administration’s priorities, but said the transition team had been
briefed on issues related to Russia.

“We would leave it up to them to describe their priorities,” Gordon
Trowbridge, the deputy Pentagon press secretary told FP. “We have
provided them with multiple briefings that touched on Russia policy.
That’s the extent of our knowledge on their priorities.”

Since the beginning of his campaign, Trump has openly argued that an
improved relationship with Russia is in the interest of the United
States, especially relating to counterterrorism efforts in Iraq and
Syria.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we got together with Russia and knocked the
hell out of ISIS?” Trump said in July, a line he frequently reiterated
on the campaign trail.

Last week, he nominated ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of
state, arguing that the oilman’s extensive business dealings in Russia
would be a major asset in international negotiations. Under Tillerson’s
leadership, Exxon has lobbied against U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow
over its armed incursion into Ukraine and seizing of Crimea in 2014.
The oil giant stands to profit from deals in Russia worth billions of
dollars if the sanctions are lifted.

Trump’s messaging throughout the campaign markedly improved GOP
attitudes on Russia, according to recent polling. But the U.S. foreign-
policy establishment — including large swaths of employees at the
Pentagon, State Department, and CIA — remains deeply skeptical of
Moscow.

Steven Pifer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who spent 25 years
as a State Department diplomat, said the memo was “both surprising and
concerning … given what the Russians are doing against Ukraine, their
military modernization effort, the bellicose tone we’ve heard from
Moscow the past three years, and NATO’s effort to bolster conventional
deterrence and defense capabilities in the Baltic region.”

Last February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
emphasized that the Islamic State terrorist group isn’t nearly as
threatening to U.S. interests as Moscow. The Islamic State “can’t
inflict mortal damage to the United States,” he said. “Russia can.”

That outlook is reflected in how the federal government has directed
billions of dollars of defense spending. The Pentagon’s chief weapons
buyer said earlier this month that U.S. defense budgets are now focused
primarily on countering Moscow.

The White House earmarked an extra $3.4 billion in the 2014 defense
spending bill to deploy two more U.S. Army brigades to Eastern Europe —
along with hundreds of tanks and heavily armored vehicles
pre-positioned for use in case of war with Russia.

The Pentagon and its NATO allies have revamped some training exercises
specifically to replicate fighting Russian armed forces, head of the
U.S. Army in Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, told FP. Hundreds of
American, British, and Canadian troops are deployed to western Ukraine,
where they’re training Ukrainian forces who are seeing daily combat
with separatists trained and equipped by Russia in the country’s east.
Many of those separatist units are led by Russian officers, Hodges said.

Under a Trump administration, those initiatives could be scaled back,
but not without a fight. Republican hawks in Congress, including Sens.
Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain of Arizona, have pledged to
oppose a softer line on Russia. Last week, Rubio openly cast doubt on
his support for Tillerson in what will likely be a testy confirmation
battle.

Others said it was too soon to judge the posture that Trump’s Pentagon
would take toward Russia as Gen. James Mattis, his pick for defense
secretary, hasn’t been confirmed yet.

“I would give this a little bit more time to be fleshed out and to hear
more directly from Gen. Mattis about what his priorities will be,” said
Heather Conley, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.

A defense official with knowledge of the transition process confirmed
that the Trump transition team has met with relevant officials tasked
with Russia policy at the Pentagon, but said: “There’s not a lot of
back and forth, it’s been mostly ‘how are you set up?’”

A second Pentagon official called the meetings professional, but said
it is hard to discern the shape of the next administration’s policies
before a defense secretary is in place.

Farkas, after reviewing the memo, said she would expect significant
resistance from Pentagon officials if the next president tries to
pursue its policy priorities as outlined. “They will find ways to drag
their heels,” she said. “Clearly, the current chairman of the Joint
Chiefs still has six months to go, and he also agrees that Russia is
the No. 1 threat.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/20/russia-missing-from-trumps-top-defense-priorities-according-to-dod-memo/