AMERICA’S ‘CRAZY’ DEFENSE SPENDING: President Trump in the last two years has never missed an opportunity to tout his $700 and $716 billion budgets to rebuild the “depleted” U.S. military. He also has vowed to rebuild America’s nuclear arsenal by adding new low-yield weapons. He further has announced his intention to abandon a landmark Cold-War era arms control treaty with the Russians. Now, in a single tweet, the president has signaled he’s rethinking the whole idea of winning an arms race by outspending and outlasting America’s adversaries.

“I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi [Jinping] and I, together with President [Vladimir] Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race. The U.S. spent 716 Billion Dollars this year. Crazy!” Trump tweeted.

This is the same Trump who in December 2016 shortly after his election, vowed, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

WHAT IT SIGNALS: Trump has a habit of taking the Pentagon by surprise — as he did earlier this year when he ordered a 5 percent cut in the DoD’s FY 2020 budget proposal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was left speechless yesterday when asked about Trump’s “crazy” characterization. “I have not seen the tweet, I’ll have to get back to you,” Mattis told reporters before rushing off to greet the Indian defense minister.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans, including the chairman of the armed services committees, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and other GOP members have called talk of defense cuts dangerous. “[W]e are in a crisis situation and cutting the defense budget now is basically a decision not to defend the nation, and that’s not a path we can go down,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said yesterday on Fox News.

REVIVE THE INF: If Trump is serious about wanting to curb a new arms race, he should reconsider scrapping the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Moscow, argue some arms control advocates. Three ranking Senate Democrats — Sen. Jack Reed, R.I., of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez, N.J., of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, Va., of the Intelligence Committee — have sent a letter to Trump arguing the withdrawal would be a “political and geostrategic gift” to Russia done without consulting Congress and key allies.

“It takes the focus away from Russia’s transgressions and malign behavior and instead feeds a narrative that the United States is willing to shred our commitments unilaterally without any strategic alternative. Additionally, it allows Russia to expand the production and deployment of its intermediate range missile system, the 9M729, which will further menace Europe,” they wrote in the Monday letter.

INF ON THE AGENDA AT NATO: The INF treaty is only between the U.S. and Russia, but it’s of intense interest to America’s European allies because it bans intermediate-range missiles that would threaten Europe with nuclear-tipped cruise and ballistic missiles. Ahead of today’s meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the future of the INF treaty will be near the top of the agenda. “It’s urgent that Russia ensures full compliance in a transparent and verifiable way. Because the INF Treaty is so important for our security,” Stoltenberg said yesterday. “We all know that the time is running out, that this is not tenable, that we have an arms control agreement that is only respected by one party.”

Good Tuesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.

HAPPENING TODAY, THE CIA’S COMMAND PERFORMANCE: The leaders of key intelligence and defense committees will be briefed today by the Director of Central Intelligence Gina Haspel about the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

The session comes after the Trump administration infuriated some members of Congress by preventing Haspel from joining a briefing last week by Secretary State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mattis. And after Pompeo accused Congress of “caterwauling,” and the media piling on about Saudi Arabia’s human right records, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that some senators took as an insult.

The loudest critic of Pompeo and Trump’s denial of any direct link to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was Lindsey Graham, who fired back in his own op-ed in the Journal this morning. The South Carolina defended the vote to send a Saudi sanctions bill to the floor for debate. “The recent vote should show Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration that Congress isn’t mugging for the cameras or ‘caterwauling,’ as the secretary of state put it. We are a coequal branch of government exercising leadership to safeguard the country’s long-term interests, values and reputation,” Graham wrote. “After all, someone’s got to do it.”

“The fear that the Saudis will stop cooperating with the U.S. on terrorism or Iran isn’t rational. Those threats pose as much of a danger to the Saudis as they do to America. Demanding better from allies isn’t downgrading the relationship; it’s a sign that Americans take our principles seriously and won’t be taken advantage of by anyone, friend or foe,” Graham argues.

HEARINGS POSTPONED: Amid funeral ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush, the House Armed Services Committee has postponed three scheduled hearings this week on artificial intelligence, the defense strategy review, and the Navy fleet. The Senate Armed Services Committee has also postponed its slated hearing with Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, and Adm. Bill Moran, the vice chief of naval operations.

GOV’T SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN DEFERRED: The Bush funeral and National Day of Mourning also prompted House to draw up anther a continuing resolution on that would keep the Department of Homeland Security and other parts of the government running through Dec. 21.  The big sticking point remains an impasse over funding for Trump’s border wall. The president wants $5 billion. Democrats are holding at $1.67 billion for “enhanced border security.”

The deadline for Congress to pass the remaining 25 percent of annual funding is Friday. The legislation could kick the debate over Trump’s border wall funding to later in the month due to President Bush’s funeral services — just as lawmakers and staff are getting antsy to leave town for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

SASC NOMINEES HEARING STILL ON: However, the Senate Armed Services is going ahead with its hearing at 9:30 this morning to weigh the nominations Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie to head U.S. Central Command and Lt. Gen. Richard Clarke to lead U.S. Special Operations Command.

PENTAGON CLOSED FOR BUSH: The Pentagon never actually closes but will be operating on a Sunday/holiday schedule tomorrow. Defense Press Operations will be closed. The Metro and River Entrances will be closed, and the few thousand essential workers will access the building via the Corridor 2 entrance.  

INHOFE WEIGHS IN: As the defense budget debate heats up, Senate Armed Services Chairman Jim Inhofe has announced he will give an address Thursday morning to students at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair. The event will focus on the need to provide funding to the military and is meant to mark Inhofe’s first address as Armed Services chairman, a position he assumed after Sen. John McCain’s death in August. He has called $733 billion a budget floor and supports a 3-5 percent increase above that, which could be tens of billions more for the Pentagon.

TODD’S TAKE: The president’s “crazy” tweet adds a new wrinkle to the growing debate over whether the Trump build-up is over. “This looks like a significant shift (perhaps a curveball) in the defense debate and a definite sign of downward pressure on the defense budget from the Trump administration itself,” Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tweeted in response to the president.

BAD IDEAS IN DEFENSE: Harrison has announced a new round of essays in the think tank’s “Bad Ideas in National Security” series. “This is our chance to tear down those frequently recurring, not too obvious policy ideas that keep us up at night. As it turns out, there are a lot of them!” he wrote in the introduction.

• OCO move: “It should come as little surprise then that the Pentagon, under a Trump administration with [Mick] Mulvaney at the helm of the Office of Management and Budget, included plans to pull enduring costs in OCO back into the base budget in its FY 2019 budget request,” writes Seamus Daniels, CSIS budget analyst. But that could create a major fiscal headache as Congress tries to reach a new deal on budget caps.
• Innovation hopes: The belief that private industry will deliver on its own the kind of technological advances the Pentagon needs to protect the country is misguided, argues Sam Brannen, a CSIS senior fellow. “Put simply, it’s a bad idea for the United States to ignore the power of national industrial strategy and policy at this moment in history and expect the private sector alone to drive necessary innovation and future security and prosperity,” Brannen writes.

AFGHANISTAN WORRIES: A big issue at today’s NATO foreign ministerial, in Brussels, is the continuing lack of demonstrable progress in Afghanistan, of keen interest to the 41 NATO nations that are part of Operation Resolute Support. “NATO is there to create a foundation for a political solution because we train, assist and advise the Afghan security forces, armed forces, to send a clear message to the Taliban that they will never win on the battlefield,” Secretary-General Stoltenberg said yesterday. “So they have to sit down at the negotiating table and engage in a real peace negotiation with the government.”

The U.S. lost another soldier Sunday when Army Sgt. Jason Mitchell McClary died at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. McClary, 24, succumbed to wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device on Nov. 27, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan. That brings the number of American service members killed in Afghanistan this year to 14 — 12 in combat, one from a “non-combat” incident, and one from an insider attack.

Asked if he was under pressure to wind down the mission in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Mattis said Saturday withdrawal is simply not a good option. “I would just tell you that if we leave, 20 odd of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world centered in that region, and we walk out of there, then we know what will happen,” Mattis said at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “Our intelligence services are very specific that we will be under attack in a number of years.”

“We’re going to have to try to end this war. And 40 years it’s enough; it’s time to end it, and get the people of Afghanistan back on the right track,” Mattis said. “We’re going to do our level best to drive this to a political resolution in order to end it.”

GREEN-CARD RECRUITS GREEN-LIGHTED: As the Army missed its recruiting goals, and other services are struggling to attract qualified recruits, the Pentagon will begin complying with a court order that will send thousands of green card holders to boot camp, The Washington Post reports this morning.

According to an internal Pentagon directive obtained by the Post, the average wait time for a green-card holder to join the U.S. military had grown to 354 days, compared to 168 for U.S. citizens. The directive suspends, for now, Trump administration policy that required more-stringent background checks for some immigrants wanting to serve, in some cases in return for a chance at U.S. citizenship.

IRAN’S MISSILE TESTS TARGETED: European leaders should impose new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, a top U.S. diplomat said while arguing in favor of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against the regime.

“We would like to see the European Union [impose] sanctions that target Iran’s missile program,” Brian Hook, the State Department’s special envoy for Iran, said Monday.

THE RUNDOWN

USA Today: Putin trip to Washington to meet with President Trump is now ‘out of question,’ Kremlin says

Wall Street Journal: CIA Director Gina Haspel to Brief Senators Tuesday on Saudi Journalist’s Death

Roll Call: Judge Sets September Trial Date for Rep. Duncan Hunter

Military.com: Air Force Secretary: B-21 Bomber Completes Another Review, Remains on Schedule

Defense One: US Foreign Policy Could Use Some Bush-Era Prudence

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Sends Aircraft Carrier to Persian Gulf in Show of Force Against Iran

Foreign Policy: Strong Economy Poses Recruitment Challenge for the U.S. Army

Military Times: Supreme Court could decide if transgender troops are allowed to serve in the military

CNN: Death of top US naval commander in Middle East an apparent suicide

Reuters: Plane carrying wounded arrives in Oman, fulfilling Yemen Houthi demand

Military.com: Tornado Injures 5 at Kings Bay Submarine Base