Twenty-six nations have pledged post-war military support for Ukraine’s security, French President Emmanual Macron announced Thursday during a visit with his Ukrainian counterpart in Paris. Macron, however, did not list the 26 countries.
“Today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious, very specific substance,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a summit meeting of Kyiv's allies Thursday.
Context: “The meeting of 35 leaders from the ‘coalition of the willing’—of mainly European countries—was intended to finalise security guarantees and ask Trump for the backing that Europeans say is vital to make such guarantees viable,” Reuters reports.
Macron: “The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” he said standing alongside Zelenskyy. Read more via the Institute for the Study of War, which also reviewed Zelenskyy’s Paris visit atop their Thursday assessment, here.
ICYMI, here’s Putin, on what may come next in his war of conquest: “It seems to me that if common sense prevails, it will be possible to agree on an acceptable solution to end this conflict,” the Russian leader told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday. “Especially since we can see the mood of the current U.S. administration under President [Donald] Trump, and we see not just their statements, but their sincere desire to find this solution…If not, then we will have to resolve all the tasks before us by force of arms.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration says it will cut some security funds for European countries bordering Russia. “The decision, affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, has alarmed NATO allies and upset U.S. lawmakers who strongly back the alliance,” the Washington Post reported Thursday. The Financial Times has more, here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1942, Japanese imperial forces suffered their first land warfare defeat of World War II when they were forced to withdraw from the Battle of Milne Bay, on the eastern edge of New Guinea.
Around the Pentagon
Newly-revealed: Failed top-secret SEAL mission in North Korea. President Trump ordered a secretive raid into North Korea in early 2019, but it went off the rails almost as soon as it began, resulting in the deaths of at least two Korean fishermen whose lungs were punctured “with knives to make sure their bodies would sink,” never to be seen again.
Dave Philipps and Matthew Cole reported the extraordinary details Friday for the New York Times, which noted, “If the public and [U.S.] policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes” by American special operations forces, “they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake.” Such missions, Phillips and Cole write, also risk “setting off a broader conflict with a hostile, nuclear-armed and highly militarized adversary.”
The mission reportedly centered around “a newly developed electronic device” believed to be able to intercept the communications of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. But the SEALs would have to place the device themselves in incredibly challenging conditions: traveling underwater in the cold darkness of a winter night, hoping no one will spot any portion of their activities due to a communications blackout and lack of real-time surveillance along the coast.
But they encountered a local fishing crew almost as soon as they approached the shore. With little time to waste, “the senior enlisted SEAL at the shore chose a course of action. He wordlessly centered his rifle and fired. The other SEALs instinctively did the same.” They then “swam to the boat to make sure that all of the North Koreans were dead. They found no guns or uniforms. Evidence suggested that the crew, which people briefed on the mission said numbered two or three people, had been civilians diving for shellfish.”
Also: “The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law.” Read the full account from Phillips and Cole, (gift link), here.
New: The District of Columbia has sued Trump over the “military occupation” of the city by National Guard troops and units from states outside the district.
The suit cites Guard troops from Louisiana, South Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina—none of whom were federalized, Jacob Fischler of States Newsroom reports, “meaning they remain legally under the command of their governors and cannot enter another state or the district without a request from the governor or the mayor of Washington, D.C.,” according to the suit filed by D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
“Defendants have established a massive, seemingly indefinite law enforcement operation in the District subject to direct military command. The danger that such an operation poses to individual liberty and democratic rule is self-evident,” Schwalb’s complaint says.
Reminder: Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the Guard deployment and his takeover of the D.C. police in August.
Expert reax: “The administration is pushing the bounds of every existing legal theory that's out there for domestic military deployment,” University of Houston Law Center Professor Christopher Mirasola said. “It's absolutely corrosive of our democracy, because I think there's a potential for a real shift in how we think about the military's role in our domestic affairs.” Read more, here.
New: The White House says Trump will indeed try to rename the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” administration officials told Fox on Thursday.
His executive order says for now the change will apply “as a secondary title,” and also authorizes “secondary titles such as ‘Secretary of War,’ ‘Department of War,’ and ‘Deputy Secretary of War’ in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch,” according to Nick Schifrin of PBS News.
By law, the DOD cannot be renamed by executive order. “Congress created the Dept of Defense through the National Security Act Amendments of 1949, which Truman signed into law. Trump can no more undo this unilaterally than he can rename Mars Trump Wor[l]d,” noted historian Joshua Zeitz, writing Friday on social media.
That’s likely why Trump’s order also “instructs the Secretary of War to recommend actions, to include legislative and executive actions, required to permanently rename the U.S. Department of Defense to the U.S. Department of War,” according to the White House’s fact sheet.
“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, I don’t even think we need that,” Trump said last week.
Why now? To “sharpen the focus of this Department on our national interest and signal to adversaries America’s readiness to wage war to secure its interests,” the White House says.
Behind the optics: “The change is also a reflection of how much Trump and Secretary of Defense (his title for now) Pete Hegseth think of themselves as tough guys,” former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic. “It is almost impossible to overstate the inanity of this move.”
If this moves ahead, “The cost of renaming the DOD will run into tens of millions of dollars, maybe much more,” Nichols writes. “Everything from official seals to uniform patches and medals might have to be replaced—and for what? Because a president who never served a day in uniform and a macho-obsessed former Army major think that using words like war will provide the sense of purpose and gravity they both lack?”
Second opinion: “If lawmakers want to preserve our international reputation as a defender against aggression by others and not an initiator of violence, they should reject any name change,” writes former National War College professor Charlie Stevenson, who served as a Senate staffer for 22 years.
Also today on Fox: its Business channel relays dismal new numbers for Trump's tariff-shaken U.S. economy: 22,000 jobs that were added in August are “much less than the expectation of 75,000” as the U.S. experienced its slowest 4-month growth since 2020, with rising unemployment and 21,000 in downward revisions for June and July employment numbers.
Around the services
Air Force debuts pilotless cargo flights in the Pacific. Autonomous cargo flights were a little-known feature of the summer’s massive Resolute Force Pacific exercise, designed to prepare for a potential conflict with China. The flights between multiple Hawaiian islands, operated by a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan powered by Joby Aviation’s Superpilot software, were remotely operated from Guam, which is about 4,000 miles away. The goal is to make logistics flights in the vast theater cheaper during wartime, reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams, here.
Related: “SECNAV moves to consolidate Navy's unmanned offices, pauses 'all' robotic contracting activities,” Breaking Defense reports, citing a Sept. 3 memo.
Update: Trump is expected to nominate acting NSA/CyberCom chief Lt. Gen. William Hartman to formally lead both agencies, Politico reported Thursday. Hartman has held the posts since April, when Trump fired Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh after meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer.
Forecast: “Hartman is unlikely to face much pushback to his nomination in the Senate.” More, here.
Additional reading:
Trump 2.0
Venezuela flew its fighter jets over a U.S. Navy ship in a “show of force” on Thursday, CBS News reports. The two F-16 fighter jets were armed as they passed over the USS Jason Dunham, which is part of a U.S. flotilla deployed to the waters near Latin America to fight drug trafficking.
“This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter narco-terror operations,” the U.S. military said in a statement on social media, and warned in accusation, “The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the US military.”
Update: The U.S. is adding two more Latin American gangs to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday during a trip to Ecuador.
“One is Los Lobos and the other is Los Choneros,” and both are from Ecuador, Rubio said. According to the Associated Press, “Los Choneros, Los Lobos and other similar groups are involved in contract killings, extortion operations and the movement and sale of drugs. Authorities have blamed them for the increased violence in the country as they fight over drug-trafficking routes to the Pacific and control of territory, including within prisons.”
Context: “Violence has skyrocketed in Ecuador since the pandemic,” AP adds. And “Cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established gangs.”
Also notable: “Ecuador in July extradited to the U.S. the leader of Los Choneros,” who was recaptured in June after a prison escape. More, here.
Related reading:
Asia
The big threat left out of Xi’s parade: China’s weaponized AI startups. A new report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology notes a growing ecosystem of small and nimble dual-use AI companies working with the Chinese military. “Those partnerships make it harder for the United States to track what new weapons China is developing and prevent U.S. investors or technology collaborators from helping them,” writes Defense One’s Patrick Tucker, here.
Contrary view: “Why China is Unlikely to Invade Taiwan.” An invasion of Taiwan is far more complicated than Washington narratives would suggest, write Dan Grazier, James Siebens, and MacKenna Rawlins in a new report for the Stimson Center. Read that, here.
And lastly, in leftover links this week:
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