Threat Status for Wednesday, December 4, 2024. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang.
President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to be his defense secretary as the nomination of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth seems to be unraveling. Sources tell Threat Status there is a growing belief in national security and military circles that the embattled Mr. Hegseth has a 50/50 shot at best to survive the week. And even if he makes it through a brutal confirmation process, there are deep concerns over whether he could win trust inside the Defense Department. Mr. Hegseth was defiant Wednesday morning.
… But there are signs that Mr. Trump may be ready to cut his losses. The nomination of Mr. DeSantis, one of Mr. Trump’s former rivals in the Republican presidential primary, could offer the Trump team the opportunity to achieve its central policy goals without the same public-relations headaches and political firestorms. Mr. DeSantis, for example, has spoken about the need to root out “woke” ideology from the Pentagon, a goal he shares with Mr. Hegseth.
… The political chaos in South Korea is far from over. After Tuesday’s stunning and short-lived martial law declaration, President Yoon Suk Yeol could face an impeachment vote in the opposition-controlled National Assembly as soon as Friday.
… A stinging GAO report found that half of the Navy’s fleet of amphibious ships used to transport U.S. Marines are in poor condition, with some out of operation for years at a time
… Former Vice President Mike Pence says Mr. Trump isn’t bluffing with his threat to impose major tariffs on China and other countries.
… Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was reportedly targeted in an apparent Iran-backed cyberattack.
… A Chinese illegal immigrant was arrested in California on suspicion of sending weapons to North Korea in shipping containers.
… And Wednesday brought another reminder of the deep divisions inside NATO over whether to bring Ukraine into the fold.
Seoul was largely calm Wednesday after a shock overnight political crisis ended with parliamentarians and ordinary citizens rising up to reverse an attempt by the conservative president to impose martial law. But the next few days are shaping up to be among the most tumultuous in the country’s recent history.
Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon has detailed dispatches from the ground in Seoul, where he reports that as the embattled Mr. Yoon remained mostly silent, demonstrators massed in central Seoul to march on the presidential compound.
The main question now centers on Mr. Yoon’s political future. An impeachment motion signed by lawmakers was filed in the National Assembly on Wednesday. The motion needs a two-thirds majority to pass the 300-person chamber and is expected to go to a vote as early as Friday. The main opposition, the Democratic Party of Korea, holds 170 seats, so it would need other parties’ support to impeach the sitting president.
Mr. Yoon’s misjudgment may turn the presidency over to firebrand opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, head of the leftist DPK. And such a seismic shift in Seoul would have immediate impacts on U.S. regional policy. A Lee administration is likely to be more North Korea-friendly than Mr. Yoon’s, and more hostile toward Tokyo.
The political upheaval comes at a pivotal moment for global security. South Korea has drawn Russia’s ire in recent weeks after publicly floating the idea of sending weapons directly to Ukraine, which would mark the reversal of Seoul’s longstanding policy of not intervening in the Russia-Ukraine war. That potential reversal would be a direct response to involvement in the war by North Korea, which has sent thousands of its own troops to the front lines to fight alongside Russian forces.
The head-spinning events in South Korea presented a dilemma for the Biden administration. Military Correspondent Mike Glenn is tracking the fallout at the Pentagon, where U.S. officials said they kept in close contact with their South Korean military counterparts throughout the day Tuesday. The U.S. has more than 25,000 troops stationed in South Korea. That detachment is a crucial part of America’s broader military posture in the Pacific.
While the nations’ respective militaries stayed in touch, top U.S. officials said they had no clue of the political turmoil about to explode in a critical East Asian democratic ally and were scrambling at the end of the day to determine where Seoul and the U.S.-South Korean alliance go from here.
With his nomination on the ropes, Mr. Hegseth, a combat veteran with no government experience, began making the rounds on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with key senators, some of whom made no secret of their reservations about the nominee’s ability to do the job as defense secretary.
Mr. Hegseth’s Capitol Hill tour comes amid growing allegations of personal misconduct. He has been accused of rape, infidelity in his first two marriages, financial mismanagement of two veterans’ organizations he ran and reports of excessive drinking around co-workers, including an incident where he allegedly chanted, “Kill all Muslims.”
Most Republican senators said they were withholding judgment on Mr. Hegseth, but Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that the reports about misconduct could complicate his confirmation chances. Mr. Hegseth took to social media Wednesday morning and vowed that he will “never back down” in the face of what he called “fake” and “BS” stories about him.
Still, it seems possible that Mr. Trump, keenly aware of bad headlines and negative publicity for his incoming administration, could be moving on. The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday that the Trump team is considering Mr. DeSantis for the role of defense secretary, should the nomination of Mr. Hegseth collapse over the next several days.
For his part, Mr. DeSantis shares at least some of the same broad policy goals as Mr. Hegseth, in particular a strong position in favor of rooting out “woke” ideology at the Pentagon.
There are clear signs that key world leaders are rapidly moving on from President Biden and are increasingly focused on Mr. Trump, even as the president-elect riles key U.S. allies with his unconventional brand of politics.
French President Emmanuel Macron has invited Mr. Trump to attend the grand reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral this weekend. The French newspaper Le Monde called the invite a “diplomatic coup” for Mr. Macron. The rekindling of the Trump-Macron relationship has overshadowed Mr. Biden’s historic visit to Angola on Tuesday, where he promoted a major rail project.
Mr. Trump has once again made clear his willingness to spark tension with key allies if he believes it will benefit the U.S. and further his “America first” agenda. In a development likely to embarrass Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Mr. Trump on Tuesday dealt what may be a mortal blow to Nippon Steel’s proposed $13 billion buyout of U.S. Steel.
Though the deal has won the backing of many in the U.S. commercial sector, political opposition has been strong. That opposition appears to have won out despite a personal intervention by Mr. Ishiba and despite Japan’s status as a key ally and the biggest single investor in the U.S.
Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he was “totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case, Nippon Steel of Japan. Through a series of tax incentives and tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel strong and great again, and it will happen FAST.”
Mr. Trump is also fueling tension — albeit in a more lighthearted way — with Canada. He posted to social media an apparent digitally altered image of himself standing in front of a Canadian flag atop what appear to be snow-capped Canadian mountains, captioned by the phrase “Oh Canada!” The post came around the same time that Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended a dinner last Friday between Mr. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said that Mr. Trump was joking when he suggested Canada become the 51st U.S. state.
Fox News reported that Mr. Trump made the comment in response to Mr. Trudeau raising concerns that Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canada would damage Canada’s economy.
Violence is raging in every corner of Syria and U.S. personnel are getting caught in the crossfire. Pentagon officials said that U.S. forces stationed in the war-torn country came under fire from rocket launchers, tanks and mortars on Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks recently on American troops there.
The statement from U.S. Central Command did not say who was responsible, but Iran-backed militias and Syrian government forces are believed to be operating in areas near the American detachment at Military Support Site Euphrates. About 900 American troops are in Syria to battle the Islamic State, but it’s not clear whether the terror network is connected to the Tuesday assault or if it even has the resources — such as armored personnel carriers and tanks — used in the incident.
CENTCOM said that its troops “destroyed several weapon systems in the vicinity of Military Support Site Euphrates that included three truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers, a T-64 tank, an armored personnel carrier, and mortars that presented a clear and imminent threat to U.S. and coalition forces.”
The clash involving U.S. forces comes amid unfolding battles elsewhere in the country between rebel groups and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces. The government said Wednesday its counteroffensive has pushed back insurgents attempting to advance to the strategic central city of Hama. Rebel forces over the past several days captured large parts of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, as well as towns and villages in southern parts of the northwestern Idlib province.
The U.S. isn’t the only major global power caught up in the fighting. Russia, which backs the Assad government, could be taking steps to get its own personnel out of harm’s way. There were reports late Tuesday that the Russian Navy may be beginning to evacuate ships from its base in Tartus, a major port city along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, as the fighting gets closer.
During his first term in office, Mr. Trump tried and failed to pull all U.S. forces from Syria. There are signs he might try it again, but some analysts warn that a poorly planned and executed withdrawal could endanger Israel, especially if the lack of American troops in Syria leaves a power vacuum that could be filled by anti-Israel forces, including the Iran-backed militias already operating there.
“The wars in Gaza and Lebanon will be a new geopolitical dynamic for Mr. Trump to consider when deciding to withdraw from Syria. As Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has shown, a disorganized pullback could result in serious harm to U.S. allies and interests,” Omer Ozkizilcik, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Yusuf Erim, editor at large of the Turkish public broadcaster TRT World, write in a new piece for The Times.
They argue that Mr. Trump could still achieve his goal of withdrawing American forces from Syria while not raising the risk to Israel. The key, they say, is Turkey, which in theory could take over much of the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State terror group.
“While there is no love lost between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of his fiercest critics, northeastern Syria is an area where the security interests of the nations may align,” they write.
Thanks for reading Threat Status. Don’t forget to share it with your friends, who can sign up here. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.
