Overnight Defense — Presented by The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates — Pompeo trip ends with testy China visit | Touts ‘progress’ after Kim meeting | Trump ‘concerned’ about missing Saudi journalist

Happy Monday and welcome to Overnight Defense. I’m Rebecca Kheel, and here’s your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. And if you don’t get our newsletter, CLICK HERE to subscribe.

 

THE TOPLINE: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up his Asia trip Monday with a stop in China.

Coming on the heels of Vice President Pence’s highly critical speech about China last week, Pompeo’s visit was notably tense.

In unusually blunt opening remarks before their meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Pompeo the Trump administration was “ceaselessly elevating” trade tensions and “casting a shadow” over relations between the two countries.

Pompeo responded that “the issues that you’ve characterized, we have a fundamental disagreement.”

A State Department statement after Pompeo’s meetings with Wang and Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party of China, said that Pompeo “directly addressed ‎areas where the United States and China do not agree, including on the South China Sea and human rights.”

 

 

 

 

Over the weekend: The focus of Pompeo’s overseas trip was North Korea, where he was Sunday.

There, he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a couple hours, followed by a 90-minute lunch with the leader.

The main goal for the trip was planning a second between Kim and President Trump.

On that front, Pompeo said the logistics for another summit were “pretty close,” but was not ready to announce the details yet.

“Sometimes that last issue is hard to close, But we’re getting pretty close,” he said. “Both the leaders believe there’s real progress that can be made, substantive progress that can be made at the next summit, and so we’re going to get it at a time that works for each of the two leaders in a place that works for both of them. We’re not quite there yet, but we’ll get there.”

On Twitter after the meeting, Trump said he looks forward to seeing Kim again soon.

“.@SecPompeo had a good meeting with Chairman Kim today in Pyongyang. Progress made on Singapore Summit Agreements! I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim again, in the near future,” Trump tweeted.

But what about the nukes?: Pompeo also said “significant progress” was made on the issue of denuclearization itself.

A State Department statement on Pompeo’s meetings in Pyongyang, said Kim invited inspectors to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site to “confirm that it has been irreversibly dismantled.”

Punggye-ri is the site where North Korea destroyed tunnels in May. When Kim first announced he was going to the do that, he said international experts would be allowed to monitor the destruction, but he ended up only allowing foreign journalists to observe.

Asked for a date on when inspectors will be allowed, Pompeo told reporters that, “as soon as we get it logistically worked out, Chairman Kim said he’s ready to allow them to come in.”

Pompeo also said is “hopeful” international inspectors will also be allowed at the missile engine test site North Korea is dismantling, as Kim promised in his most recent summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

 

ABOUT THOSE CHINA TENSIONS: The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell took a look at how tensions between the United States and China are spilling over into the military sphere.

Specifically, the “unsafe” run-in a U.S. destroyer had with a Chinese warship has prompted concern because it is uncharacteristic of the Chinese military.

Why it was odd: Chinese ships will regularly make their presence known to the Navy but last week’s incident was unusually provocative, according to Bonnie Glaser, an Asia-Pacific security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The difference this time, Glaser said, was the Chinese ship sought to interfere with the U.S ship’s operation, rather than shadow it as they usually do.

That has experts wondering whether the incident signals a tougher approach from China.

“We really are not 100 percent confident whether at the highest level the Chinese issued new rules of engagement of how to respond to U.S. ships and aircraft, because this is out of the ordinary,” she said.

Brewing storm?: Dean Cheng, a China expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the U.S. and China have long had “festering trade disputes,” with Trump bringing his own “disruptiveness” to the mix. But he worries the ship incident and cancellation of a defense meeting could signal that a perfect storm is brewing.

“They’re not directly tied to each other, but they all feed into this bumbling caldron of declining U.S.-Chinese security relations,” he warned.

Glaser told The Hill that she believes there is potential the two countries could “slide into the 21st century version of the Cold War.”

The Chinese might “dig in and look for other ways to protect their interests which will include signing trade agreements with other countries to try and protect themselves,” Glaser floated.

CORKER WARNS SAUDIS: The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is warning Saudi Arabia after the disappearance of a journalist that media reports say may have been killed.

In a tweet Monday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he raised the issue personally with the Saudi ambassador and said the United States would respond accordingly.

“Our thoughts are with #JamalKhashoggi’s family and colleagues at the @washingtonpost. I have raised Jamal’s disappearance personally with the Saudi ambassador, and while we await more information, know we will respond accordingly to any state that targets journalists abroad,” he said.

The issue: Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, has been missing since going to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last Tuesday to get paperwork for his marriage to his Turkish fiancée.

Khashoggi was an insider of the Saudi royal court before he became a fierce critic, particularly of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He has been living in self-imposed exile in Washington since 2017.

Unnamed Turkish officials told several news outlets over the weekend they believe Khashoggi was murdered inside the consulate.

Still, the Turkish government has yet to publicly endorse that finding or release evidence. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is “chasing” the investigation.

Trump response: Trump told reporters Monday evening that he is “concerned.”

“I am concerned about it,” he said when asked about Khashoggi. “I don’t like hearing about it. And hopefully that will sort itself out. Right now nobody knows anything about it, but there’s some pretty bad stories going around. I do not like it.”

Earlier Monday, asked for comment on Khashoggi, a State Department spokesperson said on background that, “We are not in a position to confirm these reports, but we are closely following the situation.”

 

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ARMY FINDS $25B SAVINGS: The Army’s civilian leader said Monday it found $25 billion to cut and reinvest elsewhere over the next five years.

Secretary Mark Esper said the savings would come from personnel positions related to equipping the services — but didn’t provide any more detail than that.

“Priorities are priorities and hard choices must be made. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, ‘don’t eliminate that program it’s only $10 million,’ or ‘don’t cut that office it’s only 15 people,'” Esper told reporters at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington.

“By going after the nickels and dimes, we’ve freed up over $25 billion in countless personnel billets that we will put back into building readiness and modernizing the Army.”

Where to reinvest: The service last year announced that it planned to start up a new four-star organization known as Army Futures Command. The command will head efforts to help modernize the Army by 2028.

Esper said he, along with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, “spent 40, 50, 60 hours going through program after program after program after activity after activity to look at each one and assess it and ask ourselves ‘is this more important than a next-generation combat vehicle? Is this more important than a new squad automatic weapon? Is this more important than Long-Range Precision Fires?'”

“We had to make those trade-offs and it resulted in, again, reductions and cancellations and consolidations.”

 

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW

Several top officials and officers are scheduled to speak at the second day of the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting and exposition. https://bit.ly/2K3UgBt

 

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