On national security, Biden is losing to Trump

From the SitRoom to the E-Ring, the inside scoop on defense, national security and foreign policy.

Nov 10, 2023 View in browser   By Alexander Ward and Matt Berg On U.S.-China, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas, former President Donald Trump handily outpolls President Joe Biden, a new survey finds. | AP Photos Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Matt One of President JOE BIDEN’s reelection pitches is that he’s a steady hand at the wheel, ably conducting U.S. foreign policy amid wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But crucial swing-state voters aren’t buying that argument. Consider the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released Thursday. It has some results Team Biden doesn’t like and that further boost former President DONALD TRUMP’s standing (all numbers are percentages of respondents): “Who do you trust more to handle each of the following issues?”: — U.S.-China relations: Trump 46, Biden 34 — Russia-Ukraine war: Trump 45, Biden 34 — Israel-Hamas war: Trump 43, Biden 33 Those key natsec issues will be top of mind for only a handful of swing staters: Israel-Hamas was 3 percent, U.S.-China equaled 1 percent and Russia-Ukraine came in at 0 percent. Importantly, 40 percent of voters from Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan said they would consider the economy first when voting. Immigration was the second-most important factor for voters at 12 percent. If there’s good news for Biden, it’s that voters won’t heavily weigh the wars or Washington-Beijing ties at the ballot box. He can point to beating Trump on climate change (46 to 28) and only slightly on trusting to “handle” democracy (43 to 41). Polls this far out from an election are rarely predictive, and elections around the country this week showed strong support for Democrats. But the bigger takeaway is clear: As it stands today, Biden is losing the national security argument against his most likely 2024 opponent. “Donald Trump has great success on all three fronts,” said MORGAN ORTAGUS, a top State Department spokesperson in the last administration. “Similar to the Carter presidency, the world is on fire over the last three years versus the relative stability under Trump.” Biden’s team isn’t buying it. “What we're seeing from President Biden is a strong hand on leadership when it comes to foreign policy,” said QUINTON FULKS, deputy campaign manager, during a call with reporters last night. “Now is not a time to put someone back who has already driven our country, both foreign policy-wise and economically, to the brink of destruction.” Representatives for the Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, though Trump himself hinted at a possible attack line last night during an interview with Univision: “Biden puts China first. He puts other countries way before us.” The Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll tracks with other recent surveys. A CNN poll this week showed only 36 percent of voters view Biden as an effective world leader compared to 48 percent for Trump. And an earlier New York Times/Siena poll found Trump beating Biden by 12 points on national security and 11 points on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A message from Lockheed Martin: Our mission is to prepare you for the future by engineering advanced capabilities today. Many of today’s military systems and platforms were designed to operate independently. Through our 21st Century Security vision, Lockheed Martin is accelerating innovation, connecting defense and digital to enhance the performance of major platforms, to equip customers to stay ahead of emerging threats. Learn more.   The Inbox ‘FAR TOO MANY’: The administration’s pressure on Israel increased Friday when Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN said that “far too many” Palestinians have died during the retaliation against Hamas in Gaza. “Much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them. Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks. And we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them,” he told reporters in New Delhi on Friday. The statement comes just a day after Israel agreed to four-hour pauses to allow Palestinians in Gaza to flee and get humanitarian aid into the enclave. And it also followed remarks by Gen. C.Q. BROWN, the Joint Chiefs chair, who warned it would be harder for Israel to defeat Hamas the longer the fighting goes on. “When we talk about time — the faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” he told reporters Thursday. Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU also walked back a previous statement that his country would be in Gaza indefinitely. "We don’t seek to occupy, but we seek to give it and us a better future in the entire Middle East," he told Fox News’ BRET BAIER last night. "That requires defeating Hamas. I’ve set goals. I didn’t set a timetable because it can take more time." Israel’s military is hoping for more weapons from the U.S. to defeat Hamas, and The Washington Post’s JOHN HUDSON reports that transfers are happening with unusual secrecy. “Contrary to its military aid program for Ukraine, which saw the Pentagon release recurring fact sheets about the volume of U.S. arms transfers, the administration has not made public the quantities of weapons it is sending to Israel. The administration is also pushing for the authority to bypass notification requirements to Congress that apply to every other country receiving military financing,” he writes. Democrats are concerned by the practice and are pushing back, Hudson adds. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly confident in the casualty numbers reported by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry, The Wall Street Journal’s NANCY YOUSSEF and JARED MALSIN report, even though Biden questioned their reliability. The ministry reports that more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s retaliation. HOSTAGE BROTHERS’ PLEA: A pair of brothers of an Israeli being held hostage by Hamas are meeting with lawmakers in the United States, pleading for Washington to do more to help the cause. Asked by NatSecDaily if the U.S. and Israel have been doing enough to free ALON SHAMRIZ, a 26-year-old computer science student who was taken from the Kibbutz Khar Aza on Oct. 7, his brother Yonatan Shamriz said he trusts that the allies are trying their best in a tricky situation. “Israel and the U.S. are great allies. I think the U.S. government does a lot. But we need more,” Yonatan said, without going into detail or saying which lawmakers they’ve met with. Yonatan said he and his brother Ido are hopeful lawmakers will heed their calls to turn the pressure up for hostage negotiations. It took 10 days for the Israel Defense Forces to confirm that Alon is being held hostage, Yonatan said. They haven’t heard from their brother since the day he was kidnapped, and the IDF hasn’t provided many details to them about his whereabouts or his condition. Dozens of hostages have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to Hamas officials, but the responsibility isn’t on Israel to make sure they’re safe, the brothers said. “Israel should know where the hostages [are] but it doesn't matter,” Yonatan said. “Hamas holds the hostages, Hamas is accountable for them. They need to protect them. They need to make sure that they are safe and [are] accountable for all of this.” ATTACKING RUSSIA’S ENERGY: Ukraine could attack Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure if Moscow ramps up its targeting of Ukraine’s electric system this winter, Ukraine Energy Minister German Galushchenko told our own BEN LEFEBVRE. Galushchenko, speaking with Ben after meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers, said Russia has regularly carried out cyberattacks against Ukraine’s electric grid and is expected to ramp up physical attacks as temperatures fall and people depend more on energy to heat their homes. “When answering [Russia’s attack], we would answer by taking the same approach, attacking their energy infrastructure,” Galushchenko said, adding that “it would only be fair.” BIDEN TO XI: HELP ON IRAN: Biden’s concerns about the Israel-Hamas war will spill over into his long-awaited face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader XI JINPING on the sidelines of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation on Wednesday, our own PHELIM KINE reports. When the two leaders meet at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay area, Biden “will underscore our desire for China to make clear in its burgeoning relationship with Iran that it is essential that Iran not seek to escalate or spread violence in the Middle East,” a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday. Any “provocative actions” by Iran will spark a prompt U.S. response, the official said. China’s ties to Iran will be part of the “tough conversations” between the leaders that will touch on all key issues of the U.S.-China relations, a second senior administration official said. They’ll include discussions on climate cooperation, China’s role in the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic and Beijing’s alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine. DRINKS WITH NATSEC DAILY: At the end of every long, hard week, we like to highlight how a prominent member of Washington’s national security scene prefers to unwind with a drink. Today, we’re featuring OLIVIER BANCOULT, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group that has been advocating for thousands of Indigenous people to be able to return to islands in the Indian Ocean, almost six decades after the U.K. and the U.S. forcibly deported them. "I enjoy drinking traditional Chagossian baka (a lightly alcoholic fermented beverage) with members of my Chagossian community living in exile in Mauritius,” he said. “With so much support building for my people in the U.S. and around the world, I believe we will be making baka and drinking baka on Diego Garcia and the other Chagos islands in 2024." Cheers, Olivier! IT’S FRIDAY AND THE DAY WE OBSERVE VETERANS’ DAY THIS YEAR. THANK YOU TO ALL VETERANS: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily. This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at award@politico.com and mberg@politico.com, and follow us on X at @alexbward and @mattberg33. While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @nahaltoosi, @PhelimKine, @laraseligman, @connorobrienNH, @paulmcleary, @leehudson, @magmill95, @johnnysaks130, @ErinBanco, @reporterjoe, and @JGedeon1.     2024 LET IT BURN: Trump has a plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: just let it burn. “You have a war that's going on and you're probably going to have to let this play out … because a lot of people are dying,” he also told Univision reporter ENRIQUE ACEVEDO last night. “There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don't know. You know, it's not as obvious, but probably that's it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends.” “Eventually there’s peace, because you're going to have a winner and a loser,” Trump continued. It’s as pure a distillation of EDWARD LUTTWAK’s “let it burn” theory as there exists. In his seminal 1999 Foreign Affairs article “Give War a Chance,” Luttwak wrote “an unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace … fighting must continue until a resolution is reached.” Trump’s comment stands in contrast to his belief that he could end the Ukraine-Russia war in just 24 hours, a claim on which VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY recently cast doubt. CHRISTIE TO ISRAEL: GOP presidential candidate CHRIS CHRISTIE will head to Israel this weekend to meet with families of abducted civilians, members of the Israel Defense Forces and government officials, our own LISA KASHINSKY reported Thursday night. “I want to see this for myself, because I’m going to continue to be a strong advocate for doing everything we need to do to defend Israel,” Christie said at a town Hall in New Hampshire Thursday night. He took a shot at his opponents too, saying that “if you really want to lead, you need to go over and show the people of Israel that one person running for president of the United States cares enough to get on an airplane and get over there and do what needs to be done.” Read: The GOP’s TikTok attacks are a front for their anti-China rhetoric, by our own REBECCA KERN. Keystrokes NETWORK WARS: Hackers from around the world are taking sides in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which will only cause geopolitical tensions to rise, a security expert told our own STEVEN OVERLY in today’s POLITICO Tech podcast. Some hacktivist groups have claimed to have leaked sensitive information from Israeli military systems, while others have targeted critical infrastructure such as water and gas supplies, RUSLAN TRAD, a Bulgaria-based resident fellow for security research at the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, told Steven. "We have polarization of these groups. In the past, we've had examples of one or another group being involved in attacks, mostly on institutional websites,” Trad said. “But right now, we have competing groups, not only opportunistic [to use the conflict] to sow some data and gather visibility, but clear examples of state-backed hackers. … This is a concept that could escalate very quickly." The Complex SUB-OPTIMISM: The Navy fell short of its goal to put two Virginia-class submarines into the water this year, but service leaders promised this week that things are going to change in 2024, our friends at Morning Defense report (for Pros!). Vice Adm. WILLIAM HOUSTON, commander of submarine forces, told reporters at the Naval Submarine League this week that getting to two Virginias a year will be critical for getting the trilateral AUKUS effort between the U.S., U.K. and Australia across the finish line. The U.S. will have to sell Australia two in-service Virginias before the Aussies can start receiving their own subs in the early 2040s. Houston said the U.S. will likely sell three Virginia-class submarines to Australia in 2032, 2035 and 2038. The first two would be pulled from the U.S. fleet, and the third, in 2038, will be a new-construction vessel from U.S. shipyards. Rear Adm. SCOTT PAPPANO, the program executive officer for strategic submarines, told the conference that the Navy is planning to extend the service life of up to five Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. On the Hill FUND HUMANITARIAN AID: Nearly half of all Democratic senators want $10 billion for humanitarian assistance to pass in Biden’s national security supplemental, per a Friday letter they sent to congressional leadership. That total, earmarked for refugee and food aid, is the full amount the president requested in the measure. “This funding would roughly match U.S. emergency spending on humanitarian assistance appropriated since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and would come at a time when global needs are only rising,” wrote the lawmakers led by Sens. JEFF MERKLEY (D-Ore.), CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-Md.), TIM KAINE (D-Va.), PETER WELCH (D-Vt.) and BRIAN SCHATZ (D-Hawaii). “Without these funds, global efforts led by the United States to address ongoing and expanded crises in Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Burma, Syria, and other humanitarian responses will suffer reductions in support. This would directly threaten U.S. national security and the security of our partners.” Calls for more humanitarian support from the U.S. have increased since the Israel-Hamas war began. The letter will add pressure to congressional negotiations as lawmakers hash out what to authorize. Broadsides HOW ABOUT NO? The FBI’s new home won’t be in Maryland for long if the agency’s head and Virginia lawmakers have anything to do with it. In an internal message to FBI employees on Thursday that was obtained by our own ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL, FBI Director CHRISTOPHER WRAY blasted the decision to move the agency to Greenbelt, Md., saying a three-person panel made up of two General Services Administration officials — the agency that oversees federal real estate — and one FBI official unanimously recommended a site in Virginia for the new headquarters. But instead, a political appointee at the GSA chose the Greenbelt site, against the panel’s recommendation. “We have concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan,” Wray wrote, adding that “despite our engagement with GSA over the last two months on these issues, our concerns about the process remain unresolved.” Transitions — Air Force Academy superintendent Lt. Gen. RICHARD CLARK will be the next College Football Playoff executive director, per multiple reports. Clark was a linebacker for the Air Force’s team that ranked in the top 10 in 1985. A message from Lockheed Martin: Our mission is to prepare you for the future by engineering advanced capabilities today. Many of today’s military systems and platforms were designed to operate independently. Through our 21st Century Security vision, Lockheed Martin is accelerating innovation, connecting defense and digital to enhance the performance of major platforms, to equip customers to stay ahead of emerging threats. Learn more.   What to Read –– MICHAEL SCHAFFER, POLITICO: The real debate over Israel is taking place behind closed doors –– CAROLINA PEDRAZZI, Jacobin: In the West Bank, Israeli settlers are burning Palestinians’ olive trees –– JUSTIN LOGAN, Reason: Why are American troops still in Iraq and Syria? Monday Today — The Brookings Institution, 1:15 p.m.: Artificial intelligence beyond the UK summit — The Atlantic Council, 1:30 p.m.: Moscow's weaponization of food: Holodomor and blockage of grain exports today — The Center for a New American Security, 3 p.m.: U.S. Air Force amidst fiscal and budgetary uncertainty Thanks to our editor, Dave Brown, who 100 percent of NatSec Daily writers say should be removed from editing duties. We also thank our producer, Andy Goodwin, who has our vote for Galactic Emperor.   Follow us on Twitter Alex Ward @alexbward   Follow us

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