SitRep: National Security Absent in Wild First Weekend; Mattis Arrives at Pentagon; Russia Inks New Basing Deal in Syria

Out of the gate. It was quite a weekend in Washington D.C. Things kicked off with the pomp and circumstance of a presidential inauguration, and continued with half a million people loudly protesting said inauguration in the streets of the capital. The protests were met with a rambling performance by President-elect Donald Trump at CIA headquarters where he free associated about the size of his crowds and told the intel community he is “at war” with the media, while White House press secretary Sean Spicer spouted a list of falsehoods from the podium about the size of the inaugural crowd.

The Islamic State? Homeland security? Iraq? Syria? Afghanistan? Libya? Russia? China? North Korea? Gitmo? Nuclear proliferation? NATO? Looming budget battles? Nowhere to be found in the reality TV-like first 48 hours.

FP’s Elias Groll rounds it up, adding that at the CIA, President Trump “toyed with war crimes, and hinted at loosening restraints on U.S. forces fighting Islamist terror groups.” In a statement, former CIA Director John Brennan said Trump “should be ashamed of himself.” Brennan said he was “saddened and angered” by what he described as Trump’s “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall.”

Speaking of spies. We learned Sunday night that U.S. counterintelligence officials have investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian officials. The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s unclear when the investigation began or what it found, but it marked Flynn is the first person inside the Trump White House to have been connected to the U.S. intel community’s snooping into the communications of foreign officials. The multiagency investigation by the FBI, CIA, and National Security Agency has been looking into whether the Kremlin hacked the emails of Democratic operatives and leaked the material to Wikileaks.

By the way… In case you missed it, new Secretary of Defense James Mattis was welcomed to the Pentagon on Saturday by Chairman of the Joint Chief, Gen. Joseph Dunford, to kick off his term as head of the Defense Department.

Base support. Lost amid the sturm und drang of the weekend’s domestic political activities was a little deal inked between Damascus and Moscow that gives Russian ships and planes access to Syrian bases there for the next 50 years. The deal underscores Russian President Vladimir Putin’s years-long effort to restore Russia’s once-powerful role in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The pact calls for expanding and making permanent Russia’s temporary air base in Latakia, and expanding the Russian naval facility in Tartus that would allow it to permanently harbor 11 ships. FP’s Paul McLeary writes that “even before the basing agreements, a Defense Department official told FP that Moscow ‘could sustain their current pace of operations for years’ in Syria due to its relatively light footprint, and advances the Russian military has recently made in supporting troops operating overseas.” The timing of the deal is notable as Washington prepares for a possible transformation in its role in the Syrian civil war. In his inauguration speech on Friday, Trump returned to familiar themes of ending foreign wars and cutting spending on overseas military deployments. He said Washington has for too long “spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.”

B roll. The Trump administration won’t be making an appearance at the Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan. Russia and Turkey agreed to set up the talks between rebels and the Assad regime as part of a broader agreement that included a hotly-contested ceasefire. But the U.S. will be skipping the talks despite an invitation from Russia to national security adviser Michael Flynn in order to attend to the logistics of the transition, according to a statement from the State Department, leaving the talks without an American presence.

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Subtweets

America’s European allies have grown wary of President Trump’s anti-NATO, anti-EU talk and have begun to contemplate what a future without close relations with Washington would look like. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier published an op-ed on Sunday about Trump’s new role as president, declaring that it means “old world of the 20th century is over for good” with the future “totally open” and with “turbulent times” ahead. What, precisely, this implies for U.S.-German relations is unclear but Germany’s Foreign Office Twitter account made a point of accenting the point in a tweet.

Iraq

In the U.S., President Trump’s comments about the press and crowd sizes at the CIA’s Memorial Wall grabbed the headlines. But as Buzzfeed reports, in Iraq, Trump’s lament that the U.S. didn’t steal the country’s oil after the 2003 invasion is heating up tempers. Buzzfeed’s Borzou Daragahi spoke to Iraqis fighting the Islamic State — some of whom fought the U.S. during the occupation — and finds them plenty steamed over Trump’s comments about Iraqi oil. “Of course I would fight the Americans if they came for the oil,” one fighter told Daragahi.

Sanctions

Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) want to make sure President Trump can’t remove sanctions against Russia without a say-so from Congress, Politico reports. The two have introduced legislation that would preempt Trump’s ability to offer sanctions relief in exchange for a deal over nuclear weapons reductions, as Trump hinted at earlier on Twitter. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has yet to schedule a vote on the legislation but McCain has argued that the bill follows in the footsteps of similar laws about sanctions on Iran voted on during the Obama administration.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, however, is tamping down expectations that sanctions relief from Trump is coming soon. Reuters reports that the sanctions “will last for a long time,” and that the new leadership in Washington shouldn’t lead Russia to get its hopes up. Tass writes that Medvedev took the sanctions policy and the Obama administration that put it in place to task in a Facebook post, writing that they were “ridiculous” and “ill-considered.”

Yemen

What appears to be the first drone strike of the Trump administration has taken place in Yemen. Anonymous Yemeni officials tell the AP that an airstrike from an American drone killed three al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members. Abu Anis al-Abi, described by the wire service as “an area field commander,” was reportedly among those killed in the airstrike.

Navy

Military prosecutors might have a hard time prosecuting Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin on espionage charges, according to Navy Times. The paper took a deep dive on the evidence against Lin, accused of providing classified information about sensitive weapons technologies to Taiwanese officials and found it on the thin side. Prosecutors have since walked back early sensational claims that Lin traded information for visits with prostitutes and spied for China. The government’s case thus far rests on emails Lin allegedly sent to lobbyists for Taiwan that the U.S. Pacific Command later classified as well as Lin’s failure to report contacts with Taiwanese officials and a trips abroad.

Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images