| | | | |  | | By Robbie Gramer and Eric Bazail-Eimil | |  In the presidential debate on Tuesday, Kamala Harris appealed directly to the “800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania,” arguing that Poland would be Russia’s next target after Ukraine. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | With help from Joe Gould, Daniel Lippman and Connor O’Brien Subscribe here | Email Robbie | Email Eric FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY — A Democratic super PAC is unveiling a new ad campaign across battleground states targeting Americans of Eastern European descent. The message? It touts Vice President KAMALA HARRIS’ record on Ukraine and bashes former President DONALD TRUMP’s approach to Russia. The campaign, run by the America’s Future Majority Fund super PAC, is expected to include rounds of TV and digital ads in Pennsylvania, followed by two more crucial swing states — Michigan and Wisconsin. All three states have sizable populations with roots in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and elsewhere across Eastern Europe. In the presidential debate on Tuesday, Harris appealed directly to the “800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania,” arguing that Poland would be Russia’s next target after Ukraine. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” Harris asserted. Coupled together, these represent a new tack for the Democrats to take in battleground states, tying their campaign pitch to communities for whom the war in Ukraine has more personal resonance and working to convince them that Trump would abandon Ukraine and allies along NATO’s eastern flank. Former New Jersey Democratic Rep. TOM MALINOWSKI is leading the ad campaign alongside JIM ROSAPEPE, a Democratic state senator in Maryland and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and MARK SIEGEL, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee. It’s unclear how their bet will pay off. There’s not yet public polling available that focuses on Central and Eastern European-American groups and whether the war in Ukraine is a driving factor in their voting decisions, and then whether they see Harris or Trump’s approach as better. A new poll by the CATO Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, and YouGov found that voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by a narrow margin believe Trump is more likely to solve the war in Ukraine and to keep the United States out of foreign wars. Foreign policy often takes a backseat in elections as issues closer to home like the economy, inflation, and immigration top voters’ concerns. But Malinowski argued small margins will matter in a race as tight as 2024. “If this is going to be a close election settled by a few thousand votes in one or more of those three states, there's no question in my mind the Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and other Central Eastern European Americans could decide the outcome,” he told NatSec Daily. (Malinowski, who was a former senior Obama administration State Department official before he served in Congress, was born in Poland.) More than 700,000 people in Pennsylvania, or some 5 percent of the state’s population, are Polish American and around 122,000 are Ukrainian American. Michigan has around 900,000 Polish Americans and 40,000 Ukrainian-Americans and Wisconsin has around 480,000 Polish Americans. In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, Michigan by 154,000 votes and Wisconsin by 20,000 votes. The new pro-Harris ad campaign “shows a message comparing Trump's appeasement of Putin and willingness to abandon our allies with Harris’s commitment to stand up to Putin in defense of our allies,” Malinowski said. Trump’s campaign pushed back on this narrative. Trump “will do what is necessary to restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage, and he is the only person who can make that happen,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told NatSec Daily. “The war between Russia and Ukraine never would have happened if Donald J. Trump were president. So sad." In Tuesday’s debate, Trump declined twice to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. He said he would talk to both Russia and Ukraine to broker a peace settlement if elected and insisted Biden bungled efforts to head off the war in his own negotiations with Putin. “That is a war that's dying to be settled,” Trump said.
| | | RESIGNATION IN ISRAEL: The commander of an elite Israeli intelligence unit has resigned after publicly accepting responsibility for his failings before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, The Wall Street Journal’s DOV LIEBER reports. In his resignation letter, YOSSI SARIEL, the head of IDF unit 8200, wrote that on Oct. 7 “I did not fulfill my mission as I expected of myself, as my commanders and subordinates expected of me, and as the citizens of the nation I love so much expected of me.” The resignation is one of the highest-profile cases of an Israeli official stepping down over the intelligence and security breakdowns associated with the attack. NEW VENEZUELA SANCTIONS: The U.S. announced new sanctions and visa restrictions against Venezuelan government officials and entities on Thursday, as the South American country’s electoral standoff spills into its second month. In a call with reporters, senior administration officials argued that the sanctions and restrictions will hold Venezuelan President NICOLÁS MADURO accountable for failing to release election results and honor the outcome of the country’s July 28 vote. The opposition obtained paper records from most of the country’s polling places showing that opposition candidate EDMUNDO GONZÁLEZ URRUTIA defeated Maduro. “It has become abundantly clear to us, not only that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes of Venezuela's presidential election on July 28, but also that Maduro and his representatives are intent on denying this fact and instead seek to cling to power at all costs,” said one of the officials, who briefed reporters ahead of the sanction announcement on condition they not be named. It’s worth noting, however, that the administration stopped short of imposing sanctions on the oil sector. The Maduro regime has yet to release detailed election results that back up its claims that Maduro defeated González, who has been forced to flee the country amid threats of imprisonment. IRAN’S LONG ARM: Iran is relying on criminal gangs, including the motorcycle gang Hells Angels, to target dissidents living in the West, per The Washington Post’s GREG MILLER, SOUAD MEKHENNET and CATE BROWN. Tehran’s actions, including paying criminal groups to physically harm or threaten dissidents, come as other authoritarian leaders have sought to intimidate and persecute critics living abroad and adds to the stress host governments already experience granting asylum to high-profile activists. IT’S THURSDAY. 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 rgramer@politico.com and ebazail@politico.com, and follow Robbie and Eric on X @RobbieGramer and @ebazaileimil. While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @nahaltoosi, @PhelimKine, @connorobrienNH, @paulmcleary, @magmill95, @johnnysaks130, @ErinBanco, @reporterjoe, and @JGedeon1
| | A message from Lockheed Martin: Capabilities from Every Angle. Deterrence at Every Turn.
Block 4 modernization is the most significant evolution of F-35 capabilities to date, including increased missile capacity, advanced electronic warfare capabilities and improved target recognition. Learn more. | | | | | GOP’S STILL TALKING CRANES: Republican lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee and House China Committee are accusing a prominent Chinese crane manufacturer of pressuring U.S. ports to grant it remote access to its equipment, as Congress seeks to clamp down on the cyber risks posed by Chinese-made shipping cranes. As our own MAGGIE MILLER reports (for Pros!), the report alleges that Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, also known as ZPMC, which produces 80 percent of ship-to-shore cranes used at U.S. ports, repeatedly asked for remote access to cranes, with a particular focus on ones located on the West Coast. It also notes that in February 2021, the FBI discovered intelligence gathering equipment near or on ZPMC-made cranes when they arrived at the port of Baltimore. “The evidence gathered during our joint investigation indicates that ZPMC could, if desired, serve as a Trojan horse capable of helping the CCP and the PRC military exploit and manipulate U.S. maritime equipment and technology at their request,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. The investigation’s findings, first reported on by The Wall Street Journal’s DUSTIN VOLZ, come as the House is poised to vote on a bill introduced by Rep. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-Fla.) that would require cranes constructed by foreign adversaries to be inspected by U.S. authorities for cyber risks before they can be used at U.S. ports. | | SOUTHCOM PICK ASSESSES 'CHALLENGING' HAITI MISSION: President JOE BIDEN’s pick to lead U.S. Southern Command, Vice Adm. ALVIN HOLSEY, conceded a U.N.-supported, Kenyan-led intervention to counter gang violence in Haiti faces "a very challenging problem set." Holsey was pressed on the situation in Haiti by Sen. TOM COTTON (R-Ark.) during his Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Thursday. Cotton warned that the small force of 2,500 Kenyan personnel isn't up to task and that the U.S. could get drawn in if the situation unravels. "I just worry very much that other nations are biting off more than they can chew under a hairbrained U.N. scheme. And where are they going to turn in a crisis?" Cotton said. "And we might end up in a situation where we have to put American forces, at least, into the ports to help evacuate people, and I think that would be very, very unwise for our nation." In his response, Holsey both expressed optimism that the crisis is solvable, and acknowledged the tough tasks ahead for Kenyan security officers in Haiti. There are now about 250-380 of those officers in the country, he said. "That's somewhat sending a signal to at least the Haitians that they're willing to wait and see how this plays out. But it will be a very challenging problem set," Halsey said of the Kenyan officers’ presence. Holsey also said that the number of Haitian migrants coming through the Darien gap is declining, a sign that U.S. efforts to curb migration flows at the U.S. border with Mexico are working. The Darien gap is a key crossing point for migrants venturing from South to Central America. If confirmed, Holsey would take over from Gen. LAURA RICHARDSON, who has led Southern Command since 2021. Testifying alongside Holsey was Air Force Lt. Gen. STEVEN NORDHAUS, the commander of the homeland-focused First Air Force and Biden’s pick for chief of the National Guard Bureau. Nordhaus would succeed Gen. DANIEL HOKANSON, who retired in August.
| | | |   | | | | | HITTING A WALL: More lawmakers are publicly conceding what NatSec Daily first reported yesterday: That sanctions alone won’t be enough to stop Russia and Iran’s budding military bromance. (The latest example of this is Iran’s shipment of ballistic missiles to Russia to deploy to Ukraine.) “There's not much room to grow our sanctions on Iran, and they have not been terribly effective at stopping their provocative actions in the region,” Sen. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.) told reporters. “So there needs to be a response, but I think we have to be careful about overhyping the impact of our response.” “You know, our adversaries are going to gang up on us,” Murphy added. “That's an unfortunate but true statement, and we need to be ready to respond. That means continuing to support Ukraine with the weapons systems that they need.” | | | ZELENSKYY SAYS NÃO OBRIGADO: Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY is no fan of Brazil’s efforts with China to broker peace between Moscow and Kyiv. As our own ELENA GIORDANO reports, Zelenskyy said in an interview with Brazilian news outlet Metrópoles that he had a good conversation with Brazilian President LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA. But Zelenskyy added he still believes Brazil is “taking Russia’s side” and called the joint Chinese-Brazilian proposal for peace “destructive” and a “political statement.” He went on to say that Brazil and China’s decision not to consult Kyiv when crafting the statement showed “a lack of respect toward Ukraine.” In May, Brazil and China signed a joint statement calling for peace talks involving both Russia and Ukraine. The effort comes as Lula has sought to flex Brazil’s diplomatic muscle, in his pursuit of a multipolar world where Latin American countries like his own can leverage more influence on the global stage. The Brazilian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Zelenskyy’s comments.
| | A message from Lockheed Martin: Innovation at the Speed of Lightning
The F-35’s Block 4 upgrades provide enhanced capabilities ensuring those we serve employ the most survivable, interoperable and connected aircraft needed to win in highly contested environments. Learn more. | | | | | — Outgoing NATO Secretary-General JENS STOLTENBERG will be the new chair of the Munich Security Conference, taking up the role after the February 2025 iteration of the high-profile gathering, our own GORDON REPINSKI reports. FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY — LOREN VOSS is now director for defense policy and strategy at the NSC, where she will focus on military personnel and readiness, our DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She is an Air Force Reserve officer and most recently was a visiting associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Law. — GREG DEGEN will be head of international affairs at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Lippman has also learned. He most recently was at the Department of Energy where he was chief of staff to the deputy secretary and is also an Obama White House and USAID alum. — ADAM YEZERSKI is joining Cornerstone’s federal government relations team. He previously was a longtime GOP professional staff member for the Senate Appropriations State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee. — The Asia Group, a D.C.-based strategic consulting firm, is announcing the launch of a new office in Mumbai, India. Managing director AMAN RAJ KHANNA will lead the effort in Mumbai under the leadership of partner and India chair, ASHOK MALIK.
| | — GERSHOM GORENBERG, The Atlantic: Netanyahu’s other war — JOSEPH STIEB, War on the Rocks: The War on Terror was not a morality tale
| | — Atlantic Council, 8 a.m.: Exploring cooperation: Turkey and the West in the Black Sea — George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, 11 a.m.: A discussion on "The U.S., NATO, and the World” with U.S. Ambassador to NATO JULIANNE SMITH — National Press Club, 12:30 p.m.: Headliners luncheon event with Nobel Women Laureates on freedom and democracy — Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2 p.m.: Political Violence and the 2024 Elections — Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2 p.m.: Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies in the fight: Combatant command and service collaboration Thanks to our editor, Heidi Vogt, who has yet to funnel cash into NatSec Daily’s Super PAC. Thanks to our producer, Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing, who is rallying swing state voters to our cause. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment