Fdd's overnight brief

Syria

Turkey’s Defense Ministry says troops have completed their second joint ground patrol with the United States in northeastern Syria. – Associated Press

A bipartisan report Tuesday urged the Trump administration to halt a planned troop drawdown from Syria and to step up diplomatic efforts to counter Iran’s influence and stave off a resurgence of the Islamic State militant group. – NBC News 

An expanded “safe zone” in northern Syria could include as many as 3 million people and stretch for 50 miles as far as Raqqa, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proposed at the UN general assembly as he pressed his case to speed up the resettlement of Syrian refugees living in Turkey. – The Guardian 

In a UN speech that blended Israel bashing and threats to settle Syrian refugees in mostly Kurdish areas of Syria, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan laid out an increasingly nationalist agenda centered on a regional policy that is underpinned by obsession with Israel and increasing interest in occupying much of northern Syria. – Jerusalem Post

Ali Demirdas writes: The Middle East is the one place where revanchism is the norm and blood feuds last for centuries. The area that PYD/YPG is currently controlling in Syria is landlocked and is surrounded by the Turks, the Arabs, the Iraqi Kurds, all wanting a piece of PYD/YPG. Thus, using PYD/YPG to counter Iran is simply not feasible. […]History shows that the United States is able to win wars but fails to implement successful nation-building plans. Thus, it tends to lose the battles that exist in the aftermath. Syria, it seems, will be no exception.  – The National Interest

Israel

President Reuven Rivlin will delay his decision of whether he will give the mandate to form a government to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Kahol Lavan’s Benny Gantz until next Wednesday. – Haaretz 

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Middle Eastern nations to fully normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, while maintaining that crippling US sanctions imposed on Iran would continue until the Islamic Republic changed its behavior. – Times of Israel 

Douglas J. Feith writes: The interests of the United States and Israel in the region largely align. Both countries aim to uphold Western democratic principles, counter Iran, oppose radical Islamism, prevent the further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and support freedom of navigation at sea and in the air. Both are committed to preserving Israel’s ability to defend itself. – Hudson Institute 

Middle East & North Africa

Since Sissi assumed power after a 2013 military coup he engineered, tens of thousands of people have been arrested, with some of them tortured, according to extensive documentation by human rights groups. Last year, Amnesty International said Sissi’s crackdown on journalists and critics had turned Egypt into an “open-air prison.” […]But Trump has consistently praised Sissi in public, while apparently celebrating the Egyptian president’s authoritarian rule in private. – Washington Post

A military court in Algeria on Wednesday jailed for 15 years two former intelligence chiefs, the brother of a former president and the leader of a political party for “conspiring against the army”, private television channels said. – Reuters 

Libya’s Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj will be representing only part of the country when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. – Associated Press

Zine Labidine Ghebouli writes: The stability of Algeria is contingent upon a quick and peaceful transition of power. It unlikely this will happen without a new understanding of civil military relations, which requires some effort and sacrifices from both sides, the military junta and the protesters. […]In the meantime, while national and international actors should hope for the best, their calculations should take the country’s current trajectory into account and begin preparing for the worst. – Washington Institute

Bilal Wahab and Barbara A. Leaf write: To keep other countries from turning Iraq into a proxy battleground, Baghdad needs to rein in the unruliest militias. This is a tall order because Tehran has spent fifteen years building them into a parallel force of its own. Given the willingness these “special groups” have shown when asked to attack U.S. troops, fight on the Assad regime’s behalf in Syria, or secure other Iranian interests, they risk implicating Iraq in Tehran’s regional confrontations with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and/or Israel. – Washington Institute 

China

A former United States intelligence officer who tried to pass secret military information to the Chinese government was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison — a term that was five years less than expected because he provided information that could help prevent foreign agents from targeting other Americans, the authorities said. – New York Times

Beijing is increasingly tapping private Chinese firms to acquire foreign technology for its military, according to officials and a new report, in a strategy that is prompting calls by leaders in Washington to retool U.S. national security policy. – Wall Street Journal

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the so-called decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would have disastrous results and that China and the U.S. need to work cooperatively through their disagreements – Wall Street Journal 

A Chinese government official and his allies allegedly tried to convince at least seven U.S. universities to sponsor visas for purported Chinese research scholars who in reality aimed to recruit American science talent, according to a recently unsealed criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department. They succeeded at least once, the complaint says. – Wall Street Journal 

Like Mr. Erdogan, the world has been noticeably quiet about Xinjiang, where China has built a vast network of detention camps and systematic surveillance over the past two years in a state-led operation to convert Uighurs into loyal, secular supporters of the Communist Party. […]Backed by its diplomatic and economic might, China has largely succeeded in quashing criticism. – New York Times

The head of China’s central bank said that the country’s interest rates were appropriate and that it wouldn’t aggressively ease monetary policy, even as other central banks lower borrowing rates in a bid to spur growth. […]Central banks in the U.S. and Europe cut interest rates this month to counter signs of weakening in their economies as they contend with trade tensions that have pressured global growth. – Wall Street Journal 

President Trump says U.S. tariffs are battering the Chinese economy, throwing millions of Chinese workers out of jobs—and pressuring the country’s president, Xi Jinping, to strike a trade deal. The reality is more nuanced. It is clear that China, after decades of rapid development, is grappling with a slowing growth pace and weaker sentiment among businesses and consumers. – Wall Street Journal 

The United States led more than 30 countries on Tuesday in condemning what it called China’s “horrific campaign of repression” against Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang at an event on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly that was denounced by China. – Reuters 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global leaders Tuesday of the looming risk of the world splitting in two, with the United States and China creating rival internets, currency, trade, financial rules “and their own zero sum geopolitical and military strategies.” – Associated Press

China’s intellectual property theft of both civil and military information is no secret. […]But they might not be far behind, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper. At the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Summit on Thursday, he warned that China is perpetrating “the greatest intellectual property theft in human history.” – Business Insider 

Elbridge Colby writes: The 2018 National Defense Strategy warned that America’s military edge against great-power competitors has eroded substantially. The past 18 years of Middle East focus have taken a toll. Weapons systems, manpower, money and expertise that might have been directed to the Pacific theater have instead been focused on the Middle East. A significant conflict with Iran would only worsen this deterioration. Reorienting U.S. power-projection toward the Pacific requires deprioritizing other things. That means making hard choices. – Wall Street Journal 

Russia

For decades, the Russian military conducted trials at a restricted site near this northern city, testing missiles that Moscow loaded onto Cold War-era submarines Residents paid little heed for years. That changed on Aug. 8, when an explosion during a missile test killed at least seven people and caused radiation levels to spike in the area around Severodvinsk. – Wall Street Journal

EU efforts to prevent Russia forging an alliance with China are a test case for the bloc’s desire to develop a more assertive foreign policy in a world of growing geopolitical tussles — and the results so far are messy. – Financial Times

Putin’s spokesman emphatically defended Russian law enforcement in the video clip that surfaced on Tuesday. Police in Russia “might not entirely courteously put you in a bus, break your arms and take you away,” said Peskov, “but in America and Canada, they’ll shoot you to hell. For a cup, for a thrown newspaper.” – Newsweek

The Americas

President Trump delivered a sharp nationalist message and assailed “globalists” in remarks to the world’s leading international body on Tuesday, while stopping short of urging any specific action against Iran for a major attack on Saudi oil facilities that his administration has said was Tehran’s responsibility. – New York Times

Colombian officials are planning to make a highly charged presentation against Maduro’s government Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly, alleging that it is evolving from a domestic threat to an international threat by harboring guerrillas they describe as “terrorists.” – Washington Post 

Mr Maduro now hopes that an official visit to Moscow this week will give him a fresh opportunity to remind the world that he remains in charge in Caracas and enjoys a powerful ally in the form of Russian president Vladimir Putin. – Financial Times

Defense

Ninety-five countries now own military drones, a sharp increase from 2010, and drone operations are becoming deeply embedded in armed forces world-wide in ways that are changing global security, according to a report due for release on Wednesday. – Wall Street Journal

The head of NASA said Wednesday that space security is necessary so that the United States, Japan and others can safely explore the moon and Mars. – Associated Press

The Air Force has given its new combat rescue helicopter the green light to go into production, its manufacturer Lockheed Martin Sikorsky said Tuesday. – Defense News 

When the Space Development Agency formally launched in March, it was billed as a major step forward for the Pentagon’s growth in space, with an ambitious plan to launch hundreds of small satellites into orbit. – Defense News 

The Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate is hoping to reframe the talk about non-lethal weapons amid a push by the Defense Department to boost lethality for high-end warfare. – USNI News 

Republicans will be “forced” to vote as soon as Wednesday whether to end the president’s emergency diversion of military funding to his border wall, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. – Defense News 

Mark F. Cancian writes: The Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) drives its FY 2020 budget proposal, which aims to fix readiness and increase modernization to prepare for long-term competition with China and Russia. […]The future poses two risks to the administration’s plans: (1) the lack of real growth in future budgets will hamper the launching of further initiatives; and (2) a softening of public, and then political, support could undermine both budgets and an engagement strategy. – Center for Strategic and International Studies