A G’Day in D.C.

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United States military carried out “self-defense” airstrikes early Friday morning on facilities used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxy militias in eastern Syria. The strikes followed a series of recent rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed groups against U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Syria, in which a total of 19 American military personnel reportedly suffered traumatic brain injuries. “The United States does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement following the airstrikes. “But these Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop.” Earlier on Thursday, however, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had threatened further escalation of the conflict. “Today in New York and from the headquarters of the United Nations I say frankly to the American statesmen and military forces who are now managing the genocide in Palestine, that we do not welcome the expansion and scope of the war in the region,” he said in a speech before the UN General Assembly. “But I warn if the genocide in Gaza continues, they will not be spared from this fire.” An additional 900 U.S. troops are being deployed to the region to bolster force protection and deterrence, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
• Israeli ground troops briefly raided northern Gaza overnight Wednesday to target anti-tank weapons and Hamas fighters and infrastructure, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday morning. More incursions are planned for the coming days to pave the way for the impending ground offensive, and airstrikes on Gaza—which IDF officials said killed five senior Hamas commanders on Thursday—continue as the military makes its final preparations.
• The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday that real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023. The robust growth greatly exceeded economists’ expectations and marked the largest gain since the fourth quarter of 2021. The bulk of this growth came from private inventory investment, federal government spending, and consumer spending—the last of which grew 4 percent over the period. “It’s a good, strong number and it shows an economy that’s doing very well,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. “We have what looks like a soft landing, with very good outcomes for the U.S. economy.”
• A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Georgia’s voting maps drawn by Republican lawmakers in 2021 violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of black voters. In a 516-page ruling, District Judge Steve Jones wrote that “the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.” Jones ordered the state legislature to redraw the maps by December 8, with one additional majority-black congressional district and several majority-black state House and state Senate districts. If the lawmakers fail to redraw the maps by the deadline, the court will do so. 
• After several obvious, bus-sized hints, Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota announced Thursday night that he would challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president. In an interview with CBS News, Phillips stressed that he believes Biden is doing a good job, but that “this is an election about the future.” He cited recent polling data to back up his calculus. “I will not sit still and not be quiet in the face of numbers that are so clearly saying that we’re going to be facing an emergency next November,” he said.
• House Republicans from New York moved on Thursday to hold a vote on removing their colleague Rep. George Santos from Congress after multiple criminal charges had been filed against the first-term congressman. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of New York introduced a privileged resolution—a legislative maneuver that requires a House vote on the measure within two working days—to expel Santos. “Santos is a stain on the House,” D’Esposito said. “This con man must be expelled.” (House leadership has the ability to table the resolution or refer it to a committee.) D’Esposito said he spoke with newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson about the measure and that the speaker told him to “do what you think is right and do what’s right for your district.” In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired last night, however, Johnson urged patience, saying it’d be a “problem” for lawmakers to “expel people from Congress just because they’re charged with a crime.”
• Blake Masters, the former venture capitalist and failed Senate candidate, declared yesterday his intent to run for the congressional seat in Arizona now up for grabs after GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko announced her retirement earlier this month. Masters—who ran against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in 2022 but lost by almost 5 points—was reportedly considering running for Senate in Arizona again, challenging incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema this time around. Kari Lake, the failed Arizona GOP candidate for governor, launched a Senate bid earlier this month and endorsed Masters’ Republican opponent in the congressional race—Abraham Hamadeh—on Thursday.
• A full day after a gunman killed 18 people and injured dozens more at multiple locations in Lewiston, Maine, law enforcement has yet to apprehend the suspect. Authorities conducted a wide search yesterday including on properties owned by the suspect’s family.

The AUKUS Ruckus

State dinners are typically lavish, celebratory affairs that bring Washington and international elites together. But with Israel actively engaged in a war against Hamas, the White House decided against the usual jubilant atmosphere for the festivities this week honoring Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. First Lady Jill Biden regretfully canceled the planned performance by 1980s pop sensations, the B-52s, opting instead for instrumental music by the U.S. Marine Corps Band. 

Perhaps it was for the best, because we’re not sure any state dinner performance could rival South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s rousing rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie” back in April. 

Despite the somber events in other parts of the world hanging over the meeting, the Australian PM’s visit was an opportunity to reinforce an important strategic relationship for the United States as the two countries move to counter Chinese influence and aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. The visit also highlighted some of the obstacles to pursuing the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, and U.S.) security pact announced in March that aims to supply Canberra with nuclear submarines. 

The meeting was the first bilateral summit in Washington between President Joe Biden and Albanese—but the two are old friends by now, having met in person nine times since Albanese took office in May 2022. (Biden was supposed to visit Australia in May, but canceled his trip to be present for debt ceiling negotiations.) The frequency of their face time speaks to the growing importance of the bilateral ties as the U.S. relationship with China has deteriorated. “Over the past few weeks and for many months before, we’ve seen each other and we’ve seen our alliance grow more critical than ever,” Biden said Wednesday during a White House Rose Garden press conference. “And we need to make—continue to make—this important progress.” 

Chinese aggression in Australia’s general vicinity has led to the tightening of the Washington-Canberra friendship. Earlier this month, the U.S. Defense Department released footage of more than a dozen close encounters in the Pacific region over the last 18 months between U.S. and Chinese aircraft caused by “risky” maneuvers by People’s Liberation Army pilots. It happened again on Tuesday, as a Chinese jet came within 10 feet of a U.S. B-52 spy plane over the South China Sea (which might have rendered the planned state dinner performance by the rock group of the same name a little on-the-nose). There have also been incidents in the water, with Chinese ships getting too close for comfort to U.S. and Canadian craft. Last year, Australia accused China of “an aggressive act” after one of Beijing’s spy ships was spotted near a sensitive defense facility off the coast of Western Australia. 

This month, there was yet another example of aggressive Chinese maritime behavior, as a Chinese coast guard ship engaged in “dangerous blocking maneuvers,” according to the Filipino military, which resulted in a collision between the Chinese vessel and Filipino resupply ship. The Filipino craft was on its way to the Second Thomas Shoal to bring provisions to sailors stationed aboard an intentionally scuttled ship in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. China has claimed the shoal as its own, though that claim is not internationally recognized. President Biden was forceful in his condemnation of China’s actions against the Filipino ship, and said the U.S. commitment to its partner was “ironclad.” 

Albanese, who will visit Beijing in November, didn’t explicitly address China’s aggression towards the Philippines—his country’s newly minted “strategic partner”—while speaking to the press, and was a little more circumspect than Biden in describing Canberra’s posture vis-à-vis Beijing. “We have strategic competition in our region,” he said. “That’s a fact that we are living with. The relationship with China is one where the principle that I bring to it is to cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, but engage in our national interest.” 

Biden’s take on whether Australia can trust China? “‘Trust but verify,’ is the phrase,” he said, almost curtly, as he quoted a Ronald Reagan maxim. “That wasn’t a throwaway line,” John Lee, a Sydney-based senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told TMD. “I think there are some concerns in America that the current Albanese government—in the name of stabilizing relations with China—is walking away from a more robust activist line countering China.” 

Even if Albanese is treading a little more carefully, the AUKUS deal leaves no question that the U.S. and Australia are trying to project strength in the region. The three-way security and defense agreement aimed at sharing sensitive defense technologies will also result—eventually—in Australia’s purchase of at least three (and potentially as many as five) American Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines with a delivery date sometime in the early 2030s.

But there are some key roadblocks stateside to allies in Australia making the most of that agreement, and it wasn’t clear Albanese’s visit did much to change that—especially considering the hindrances lie with Congress, and not the president. The U.S. has extremely sticky export controls—International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)—on defense technology, which are in place to prevent sensitive military tech from ending up in the hands of those who pose a threat to the U.S. Those regulations require a literal act of Congress to change, even if it’s to the benefit of two close partners—which has drawn the ire of U.S. allies. “What we cannot afford in the future, is the continuation of the most ridiculous manifestations of the ITAR regime,” the Australian ambassador to the U.S., former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, told a gathering of the American Australian Association earlier this month. 

Congress hasn’t exactly been on the ball recently, but even if it had been at the top of its game, ITAR has historically proven to be a tough nut to crack. Then-President George W. Bush tried to convince his Republican allies in Congress to allow the U.K. and Australia to join Canada on the list of countries with an exemption to ITAR, but congressional Republicans refused to do so, citing lax export controls in London and Canberra that could create a risky loophole (which had already been a problem for Ottawa). The script was flipped this summer, with House Republicans in the Foreign Affairs Committee—led by Chairman Mike McCaul—in favor of the exemptions, and Democrats voting against the approval without a demand for the U.K. and Australia to tighten their export controls. Those measures have not passed the full House. 

That said, export controls aren’t the only barrier to making the full deal come to fruition. While Congress is generally in favor of AUKUS in principle, a handful of senators in particular are concerned that the state of the U.S. defense industrial base and backlogged U.S. shipyards would make giving up three nuclear subs untenable for U.S. national security—particularly in light of caps on government spending imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. 

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who supports the AUKUS agreement, blocked fast-tracked approval for the submarine sale contingent on supplemental funding to build more submarines and bolster the industrial base (as part of the agreement, Australia is kicking in $3 billion to increase U.S. shipbuilding capacity). Wicker hailed the additional $3.4 billion for the submarine industrial base in Biden’s supplemental for Ukraine and Israel as “a welcome start to the process of fortifying our submarine maintenance and production capabilities, but it cannot stop here.” 

“There is still much work to be done with the administration and Pentagon to expand our industrial base and add the necessary attack submarines to prevent conflict on the seas,” he added. “But this package signals a positive first step toward that goal.” The supplemental still needs to be taken up by Congress and may undergo modifications before it’s passed. 

Though AUKUS is perhaps the central pillar of the U.S.-Australia relationship, it’s not the only way Biden and Albanese are trying to flex their collective geopolitical muscle. The pair announced a plan to fund Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to run undersea cables to remote Pacific islands, bolster infrastructure development in the face of rising sea levels, and increase Pacific nations’ access to global finance. The plan is positioned as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s diplomacy-through-infrastructure scheme. “There is an acceptance by both countries—and I think a correct and timely one—that the United States and its allies, such as Australia, are doing very well with other advanced economies when it comes to the geostrategic piece, but we’re not doing so well with developing economies,” Lee told TMD. “Whereas China’s the reverse: China has really ruined many of its relationships with the advanced economies, but it’s doing quite well with developing economies … because it offers these developing economies immediate and guaranteed economic benefits.”

The U.S. and Australian outreach is a continuation of the Pacific Island Forum—meetings of leaders of island nations as well as Canberra and Washington—to try to outflank Chinese diplomatic efforts in the region. Bolstering a kaleidoscope of multilateral relationships has been central to Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy. In addition to AUKUS, the U.S. and Australia are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement—which predates Biden and also includes New Zealand, Canada, and the U.K. The Quad—or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which also includes Japan and India—is a loose grouping which has only grown more cooperative as China has become more assertive on the world stage. 

The meeting this week helped reinforce those efforts, despite the world’s attention directed at Israel and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, Justin Bassi—executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and former national security adviser to Australian Prime Minister Martin Turnbull—told TMD. “What has been really important this week is to ensure that, while the immediate focus is on both Europe and the Middle East,” he said, “Australia and the U.S. [are] telling each other—and they’re telling the world—that the Indo-Pacific remains the top, long-term strategic priority.”

Worth Your Time

• Writing for Commentary, Jordan Chandler Hirsch argues public figures and political analysts have improperly invoked 9/11 when warning Israel against taking the fight to Hamas. “The 9/11 analogy morphed from one of condolence to caution,” Hirsch wrote. “Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s former speechwriter, tweeted that ‘the U.S. should have learned from 9/11 the profound cost of being guided by anger and fear. I hope that is what we are telling the Israeli government.’ In the Atlantic, the journalist George Packer wrote that ‘if Americans now have anything useful to tell Israelis, it would be: Don’t. Don’t let your justified fury replace reason.’ President Biden soon adopted this theme, warning Israelis not to be ‘consumed’ by their anger and make the same ‘mistakes’ as a post-9/11 America ‘enraged’ by al Qaeda’s terror. These admonitions share something in common: They are less about 9/11 than 3/19, the date on which America invaded Iraq in 2003. … Although the United States devoted much effort to ensure that Islamists could not strike America again, it was never in danger of foreign invasion. Israel, by contrast, confronted a several-battalion-strength onslaught, akin to al Qaeda not only destroying the Twin Towers on 9/11 but capturing lower Manhattan, butchering civilians, and firing rockets at greater New York. The threat to Israeli sovereignty remains acute, with the possibility that Hezbollah could also attempt to seize Israeli cities. Moreover, when the United States tired of Afghanistan and Iraq, it had the option to leave on its own terms. Israel enjoys no such luxury with Hamas, separated from it only by a far-too-thin fence. Most fundamentally, however much America’s withdrawals from the Middle East harmed its credibility, Hamas’s assault is an existential threat to Israeli deterrence.”

Presented Without Comment

Politico: NYC Offers Migrants Free Travel Anywhere to Move 

Also Presented Without Comment

New York Times: Hamas Leaders Arrive in Moscow as the Kremlin Attempts to Showcase Clout

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Axios: Biden’s Approval Rating Among Dems Drops 11 Points in One Month

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick dives into (🔒) Democrats’ declining confidence in Joe Biden’s ability to beat Trump, and Mike and Sarah break down what all the plea deals might portend in the Georgia election interference case.
• On the podcasts: Sarah, Steve, and Mike take to The Dispatch Podcast to discuss the new speaker of the House and what it means for Trump’s continued hold on our politics. 
• On the site: Mike Warren details Mike Johnson’s big speaker win, Daniel Bennett examines the new speaker’s tenure at the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Paul Miller pens an ode to baseball ahead of the World Series.

Let Us Know

Do you agree with Justin Bassi that, despite what’s going on in Ukraine and in Israel, the “Indo-Pacific remains the top, long-term strategic priority” of both Australia and the United States?