Jim Mattis on US troops in South Korea: 'We're not going anywhere'

TROOPS TO STAY: When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with reporters on his plane back to Washington this weekend, he had something he wanted to get off his chest. The 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea are not leaving anytime soon. “We're not going anywhere,” said Mattis. “It's not even a subject of the discussions.”

Mattis was returning from the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore where North Korea and China were the big topics. Mattis pointed out that troop levels in South Korea are a joint decision of the U.S., South Korea and the United Nations under terms of the treaty that ended the Korean War in 1953. In fact, Mattis said Canada, which has a three-star general as deputy UN commander, is going to send more troops to the South to show solidarity with the U.S.

“I really don't know where this stuff comes from. I get asked it every time in the Pentagon press room,” Mattis said, without using the term “fake news.” He lamented, “Once someone's made it up, however, apparently it gets a life of its own. Someone picks it up, and someone else said so, too.” He said there is no consideration of drawing down troops. “No, it never comes up.”

BUMPY ROAD TO PEACE: "We can anticipate, at best, a bumpy road to the negotiations," Mattis cautioned at the beginning of discussions with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo and Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera in Singapore. Later on his plane he explained, “All negotiations are bumpy.” As for the on-again, off-again summit that is now on again for next week, “You remember how we were going crazy — oh, gosh it's off when a bad letter comes in. And immediately it's back on? Welcome to reality,” Mattis said. “The hopes are riding with the diplomats, no surprise.”

Today, U.S. and North Korea representatives met for the fifth time in the Demilitarized Zone to nail down details for the Singapore summit, which is now just eight days away.

A MOVE TOWARD MODERATION: Meanwhile, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, citing an intelligence source, is reporting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has replaced his three top military officials with officers who may be more moderate and supportive of Kim’s overtures to the U.S.

"The North appears to have brought in new figures amid the changes in inter-Korean relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula as the previous officials lacked flexibility in thinking," the source told Yonhap. "In particular, No Kwang-chol has been classified as a moderate person."

ASSAD TO MEET KIM: And Syrian President Bashar Assad is the latest leader to announce plans to meet with Kim in Pyongyang. No date has been set.

LOW-YIELD NUKES IN THE CROSSHAIRS: Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill are alarmed by the Pentagon’s plans to develop a low-yield nuclear warhead to counter Russia. But so far their efforts to block development of the weapons through the annual budget process have come to naught. This week a group of House Democrats will take another shot. Reps. Barbara Lee, Earl Blumenauer, John Garamendi and Dan Kildee are sponsoring an amendment as part of a Department of Energy appropriations bill that would cut $65 million in the coming year for a new W76-2 warhead for Trident II missiles on Ohio-class submarines.

The House Rules Committee, chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions, is meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday to tee up the legislation and decide whether the warhead amendment will actually get a vote on the chamber floor. It remains unlikely Democrats could summon the votes to pass the amendment, if it does get a vote. The House Armed Services Committee backed the warhead plans in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act and Democrats failed to strip the measure during that bill’s floor passage. On the other side of the Hill, Senate Democrats were also unsuccessful in blocking the weapons in a Department of Energy spending bill that passed committee on May 24.

MORE AMENDMENTS: The 2019 energy and water bill, which is being bundled with veterans and military construction funding, will be the first appropriations legislation up for passage since Congress passed the lumbering $1.3 trillion omnibus for 2018 in March. So, the Rules Committee will be combing through at least 171 proposed amendments. Here are a couple of other defense issues lawmakers are pushing:

BRAC: After years of trying, the Pentagon this year essentially gave up trying to get Congress to allow closure of unneeded bases around the country. But Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe clearly wants to be sure. His amendment bars any funding in the bill being used to shutter facilities under the Base Realignment and Closure process.
Immigrant children: The Pentagon recently confirmed the Department of Health and Human Services is exploring the possibility of holding children of illegal immigrants on military bases. The arrangement has been used in the past, but Democrats are pushing back under the Trump administration and its border crackdown. Reps. Gerry Connolly and Lou Correa have filed separate proposals to restrict the move.

Good Monday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). 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: President Trump is scheduled to lunch today with Vice President Mike Pence and Mattis. Also on the White House schedule, the president and first lady Melania Trump host a reception for Gold Star families. Melania’s low profile since her surgery for a benign kidney condition has raised questions in the press, but in her last tweet five days ago she insisted that she was just fine. “I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing. Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people!”

CHINA’S COERCION: Mattis will no doubt brief the president on his interactions at the Shangri-La conference, where he had particularly sharp words for China. He focused on its militarization of man-made islands in the South China Sea, where the U.S. says China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, electronic jammers, and landed a nuclear-capable bomber on Woody Island.

“Despite China's claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapons systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion,” Mattis said. “China's militarization of the Spratlys is also in direct contradiction to President Xi's 2015 public assurances in the White House Rose Garden that they would not do this.”

Mattis said, however, the U.S. is not asking other countries to take sides in the dispute, because “a friend does not demand you choose among them.” The U.S. “will continue to pursue a constructive, results-oriented relationship with China,” cooperating “whenever possible.”

A COKE AND A SMILE: Mattis later told reporters the Chinese delegates didn’t seem to take it personally. “I saw them at lunch yesterday, which would have been after I spoke, and we enjoyed our Coca-Cola together, and we talked,” Mattis said. “Nothing adversarial at all.” Mattis is scheduled to visit China soon. Despite the tensions over the South China Seas and Trump’s tariffs, that trip is still on. “I'm still certainly going to China,” he said.

THORNBERRY AT SHANGRI-LA: While Mattis was delivering a strong message to China, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee was also at the retreat for meetings with a string of senior officials from the Indo-Pacific. “The region is also home to some of America’s closest alliances and most promising new partnerships,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, who was there with a congressional delegation.

Thornberry pushed for the decision by Mattis last week to change the name of U.S. Pacific Command to Indo-Pacific Command as a symbol of a wider U.S. effort to develop allies, and his committee is backing an initiative aimed at a greater U.S. military presence in the region and more joint training. He met with Mattis as well as officials from Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, South Korea, and Japan at Shangri-La.

Mattis, who noted that in the past Sen. John McCain was a fixture at the annual conference, said it was good that a new crop of lawmakers was taking interest. “I think it was Mark Twain who said, travel … it's like an antidote for prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. You know, you just can't keep a closed mind when you travel, you know,” Mattis told reporters. “So the more we can get the congressmen and women out here, bipartisan, defense and non-defense, I think that says more about a commitment to Asia than just my going.”

RISING CHINA: China is on the verge of surpassing the United States as an economic and military power, a senior Republican senator predicts, in part because of the Communist regime's success in lifting a nation of 1.4 billion people out of poverty.

“Combine that human capital with financial capital, and technology, and they're going to be the powerhouse, globally,” Sen. Ron Johnson told the Washington Examiner last week. “Certainly, regionally. ... We’re having trouble financing a 300-ship Navy. They're not going to have a problem doing that.”

CANADA INSULTED: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is perplexed and frankly insulted that Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from his country in the name of national security. “The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is, quite frankly, insulting and unacceptable,” Trudeau said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“You know, our soldiers who had fought and died together on the beaches of World War II, and on the mountains of Afghanistan and have stood shoulder-to-shoulder in some of the most difficult places in the world, that are always there for each other, somehow, this is insulting to that,” Trudeau said. “The idea that the Canadian steel that's in military vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminum that makes your fighter jets is somehow now a threat.”

On Fox, Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow dismissed Trudeau’s concerns as a “family quarrel” that will be worked out. “I think he's overreacting. I don't want to get in the middle of that. As a fine friend and ally of the United States, nobody denies that. But the point is, we have to protect ourselves,” Kudlow said on “Fox News Sunday.”

DoD AUDIT GAINS TRACTION: The Pentagon’s top-to-bottom audit of how it spends billions of taxpayer dollars is well underway and has “really got traction,” Mattis said. “We've got this big, full-scale audit. It's an army of auditors going through and taking our programs apart,” Mattis told the traveling press. “I just sent a note out to everybody. I just said, we're going to invite the scrutiny. We're going to find the problems.

“I know it's uncomfortable to get inspected. But this is what's necessary to maintain bipartisan support and the budgets we need,” Mattis said. “We are going to clean up every problem that they find.”

OPERATION ROUNDUP INTENSIFIES: It’s been a month since the U.S.-backed forces in Syria restarted their offensive to finish off Islamic State fighters in Syria, dubbed “Operation Roundup.” The operation was not named for the popular herbicide used to eliminate weeds from the garden, but it could have been.

U.S. Central Command, in an end-of-the-month report, says coalition and partner forces completed 225 strikes in May, up from 74 strikes in March and from 183 strikes in April. The increased air activity is a reflection of increase ground activity, which is where the toughest fighting is done.

WHO PICKS UP THE TAB? The U.S. is trying to determine who should pay for Kim’s hotel room for the summit with Trump, a new report says.

North Korea has demanded that a foreign country pay for the North Korean delegation’s bill at The Fullerton, North Korea’s preferred 5-star luxury hotel, the Washington Post reports. A presidential suite at the resort costs more than $6,000 a night.

The U.S. is not opposed to paying for Kim’s hotel room, but is also reportedly weighing asking Singapore to pick up the costs, according to the Post.

MAYBE THEY WILL: The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is offering to cover the costs for the summit with its Nobel Peace Prize cash earnings, including the cost of the North Korean leader's hotel. In a statement, the group referred to the costs as part of its efforts to promote denuclearization.

“Our movement is committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons and we recognize that this historic summit is a once in a generation opportunity to work for peace and nuclear disarmament,” the Geneva-based group explained.

ANOTHER PUTIN MEETING: The White House is reportedly planning for a possible meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, though the arrangements remain in the early phases.

A senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal that Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been working to set up the potential summit between the two leaders while in Washington. Details, including the date and location, have yet to be finalized.

OBAMA’S SYRIA HANGOVER: Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser to former President Barack Obama, believes his old boss's desire to avoid a "perpetual" cycle of U.S.-led wars in the Middle East was among the reasons he didn't order a military intervention in Syria.

"The hangover from the Iraq War had left us staggering toward military intervention with next to no international support, and a Congress demanding that we go through the same divisive process of seeking authorization that had just failed in London," Rhodes writes in his forthcoming memoir, "The World As It Is.”

Obama has been criticized for drawing a "red line" against the use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad, but then failing to take action. Rhodes said Obama argued that "a president alone couldn’t keep the United States on a perpetual war footing, moving from one Middle Eastern conflict to the next."

THE RUNDOWN

AP: Taliban reject US commander’s statement on peace talks

Reuters: U.S. Weighs More South China Sea Patrols To Confront 'New Reality' Of China

Bloomberg: Hunt for Trump-Kim Venue Leads to Old Singapore Pirate Hangout

Politico: Merkel endorses idea of joint European defense force

Washington Post: Shipbuilders Set A Course To Lead Navy Program

Fox News: India tests nuclear-capable Agni-5 ballistic missile

Reuters: North Korea's top three military officials replaced, U.S. official says

Defense One: A Radical Pick for the National Security Council

Navy Times: It’s official: The US Navy has a new ship killer missile

Washington Times: Pentagon Prepares For Climate Change, Avoids Political Phrases While Protecting Bases

Reuters: Google To Scrub U.S. Military Deal Protested By Employees - Source

AP: Pentagon to take over security clearance checks

New York Times: In A Trump-Kim Meeting, Headaches Of Seating, Serving And Spending

MONDAY | JUNE 4

10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Maritime Security Dialogue: Innovation and the Marine Air-Ground Task Force with Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault, Deputy Commandant of Plans, Policies, and Operations; Lt. Gen. Robert Hedelund, Commanding General of II Marine Expeditionary Force; and Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, Commanding General of Marine Corps Combat Development Command. csis.org

11 a.m. 1152 15th St. NW. “Technology Roulette: Managing Loss of Control as Many Militaries Pursue Technological Superiority” Report Launch. cnas.org

12:15 p.m. 740 15th St. NW. From Revolution Muslim to Islamic State: The American Roots of ISIS’ Online Prowess. newamerica.org

12:15 p.m. North Korea’s Smile Diplomacy: Breakthrough or Déjà Vu? defenddemocracy.org

TUESDAY | JUNE 5

8 a.m. 300 First St. SE. The Nuclear Deterrent Breakfast Series: NATO and Extended Deterrence and Missile Defense. mitchellaerospacepower.org

9:30 a.m. 800 21st St. NW. George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security Book Launch of “Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News” with Author Clint Watts. cchs.gwu.edu

11:30 a.m. 2425 Wilson Blvd. Institute of Land Warfare and the Israeli Institute of Advanced Military Thinking: Lessons from the Yom Kippur War. ausa.org

12:15 p.m. 1800 M St. NW. Iran's Deceptive Financial Practices with Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. defenddemocracy.org

12:30 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. Northern Syria: The United States, Turkey, and the Kurds. cfr.org

1:15 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. A discussion on priorities for the U.S. Army with Secretary Mark Esper. brookings.edu

1:30 p.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. U.S.-North Korean Summit: Cancelled or Postponed? heritage.org

3:30 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. The Marshall Plan’s 70th anniversary and the future of development cooperation. brookings.edu

4:30 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Assessing Threats to Space Systems. csis.org

WEDNESDAY | JUNE 6

8 a.m. 300 First St. SE. The Nuclear Deterrent Breakfast Series: Missile Defense Perspectives. mitchellaerospacepower.org

8:30 a.m. 800 Florida Ave. NE. Agile in Government Summit. ndia.org

10 a.m. Dirksen 342. Hearing on S. 2836, the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018: Countering Malicious Drones. hsgac.senate.gov

11 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Why Americans Should Study Military History: A Conversation with Dennis Showalter, Retired Professor of History at Colorado College. csis.org

12 noon. 740 15th St. NW. Countering Disinformation and Violent Extremism in the Digital Age. newamerica.org

12 noon. 1127 Connecticut Ave. NW. The Founding Principles as Pillars of Our Foreign Policy with Rep. Mike Gallagher. fedsoc.org

2 p.m. Rayburn 2154. Hearing on Protecting America from a Bad Deal Ending U.S. Participation in the Nuclear Agreement with Iran. oversight.house.gov

2:30 p.m. Dirksen 342. Subcommittee Hearing on War Powers and the Effects of Unauthorized Military Engagements on Federal Spending. hsgac.senate.gov

5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Book launch of “Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World.” csis.org

5:30 p.m. 2425 Wilson Blvd. Institute of Land Warfare Hosts Adm. Kurt Tidd, Commander of U.S. Southern Command. ausa.org

THURSDAY | JUNE 7

8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group Breakfast with Adm. Kurt Tidd.

9 a.m. House Visitor Center 201. Protecting the "Pipeline": Overcoming the Air Force's Pilot Shortage with Brig. Gen. Michael Koscheski, Director of Aircrew Crisis Task Force. mitchellaerospacepower.org

9:30 a.m. 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW. An Action Plan on U.S. Drone Policy. stimson.org

12:30 p.m. 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW. The Nonproliferation Treaty at Fifty. stimson.org

1:30 p.m. 2301 Constitution Ave. The Long Search for Peace in Afghanistan. usip.org

FRIDAY | JUNE 8

8 a.m. 300 First St. SE. The Mitchell Space Breakfast Series: Space Rapid Capabilities Office Discussion with Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Commander of Space and Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command. mitchellaerospacepower.org

9 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Press Briefing: Preview of the Proposed Trump-Kim Summit. csis.org

MONDAY | JUNE 11

3:30 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Perceptions of the OSCE in Europe and the USA. wilsoncenter.org

5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Schieffer Series: Russian Active Measures: Past, Present, and Future. csis.org

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“You could lose your sovereignty and your freedom from debt more than [from] a soldier with a bayoneted rifle, you know? You can lose it economically instead.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warning countries about the dangers of so-called debt-trap diplomacy, by accepting loans that are “too good to be true” from countries such as China.

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