US to suspend aid to Pakistan; Navy missile on Air Force planes; Mattis on Korean wargames; DoD seeks laser-powered bat drones; and just a bit more...

“We do not have any alliance” with the U.S. That’s Pakistan foreign minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Friday, responding to the White House’s Thursday announcement that it would suspend almost all its aid to Islamabad. Talking with the Wall Street Journal, Asif continued, “This is not how allies behave.”

The “across-the-board freeze...is the most tangible sign yet of Washington’s frustration with the country’s refusal to crack down on terrorist networks operating there,” the New York Times reports this morning.

At stake: “about $1.1 billion in Coalition Support Funds, which the Pentagon provides to help defray the costs of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.”

What the U.S. wants: For "the Pakistani government to cut off contact with militants and reassign intelligence agents with links to extremists," the Times writes, as well as “access to a member of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, who was captured by Pakistani forces during the rescue of a Canadian-American family in October, and were angered when Pakistan rejected the request.”

At risk now, from the U.S. military’s perspective: “routes in Pakistan that it uses to supply roughly 14,000 American troops deployed in neighboring Afghanistan.”

The State Department says: “Pakistan has the ability to get this money back in the future, but they have to take decisive action,” Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday.

Pakistan says: “Working toward enduring peace requires mutual respect and trust along with patience and persistence. Arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goal posts are counterproductive in addressing common threats,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry replied in a statement Thursday. It was Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif who called the U.S. now neither a friend nor ally, but “a friend who always betrays,” the Washington Post reports. Pakistan’s opposition parties, naturally, took a more harsh line, recommending the expulsion of diplomats and severing supply routes to the U.S. military.

There is a precedent for this move from Washington — not that it worked much, the Times reminds us: “In July 2011, two months after an American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the Obama administration suspended about $800 million in aid. Relations with Pakistan did not improve, and officials there have come to discount such threats.”

Sidenote: When your D-Brief-er was redeploying from Afghanistan in 2011, an incoming unit was forced to share equipment with colleagues for their 12-month rotation since Pakistan, in retaliation, had frozen a good deal of U.S. military shipping containers in their country — some for the duration of those troops’ deployment. The soldiers adapted.

From Defense One

Pentagon Seeks Laser-Powered Bat Drones // Patrick Tucker: A new contest seeks flight systems inspired by Mother Nature and powered by directed-energy beams.

What Trump Got Right in Foreign Policy in 2017 // Andrew Exum: For one thing, the Islamic State is largely defeated.

American Ideals Beat the USSR. Why Aren't We Using Them Against Russia? // Jeffrey Mankoff: Without an ideological rival to hold a mirror to its faults, the US is turning away from the ideas and institutions that led to victory.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free.

I “wouldn’t read too much” into the delay, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said of the decision to delay military drills with South Korea due to Olympic safety concerns, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Some American officials said they expected the exercises would be carried out—more or less unchanged—after the Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympics, which are scheduled to take place March 9-18.”
Mattis quote, in full (via Defense News’ Aaron Mehta): “It’s just the normal deconfliction. I wouldn’t read too much into it because we don’t know if it is a genuine olive branch of not. Obviously, we have to be open to anything that would implement a diplomatic solution. Those talks clearly are the result of the amount of international pressure, and they are a way, I think, for North Korea to start talking while keeping it contained for a benign issue. It is difficult for me to disassociate that he is now willing to negotiate on any issue with months and months of United Nations Security Council effort.”
Said South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in: “We will closely cooperate with the U.S. in any talks with the North, and strongly believe inter-Korean talks will help create a mood desirable for U.S.-North Korea talks aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear-weapons issue.”  
And oh by the way: “The South Korean Defense Ministry dismissed reports that the North could be preparing a missile launch,” the Journal writes, “saying the South hadn’t detected any unusual activities hinting a launch was near.” A little bit more (paywall alert), here.

The Navy’s new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile will deploy first on U.S. Air Force aircraft, Military.com reports in the latest from what are called LRASM tests — in this case with the B-1B Lancer. “Last month, B-1 crews launched the Lockheed Martin Corp-made AGM-158C LRASM at Point Mugu Sea Range, California. The precision-guided, anti-ship standoff missile was first tested on a B-1B in August... Once launched from the aircraft, the LRASM -- which is based on the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) -- will be able to autonomously sensor-locate and track targets while avoiding friendly forces.” Read on, here.

Is violating the terms of the INF treaty worth $25 million and a new “road-mobile ground-launched cruise missile” system? Those are the risks and cost of a new missile proposal the Trump White House is working on in from the latest $700 billion defense authorization bill, Time’s Bill Hennigan reported this week.  
What you need to know: “The research and development required by Trump’s new law wouldn’t in itself violate the treaty; only the development of a medium-range missile would,” Hennigan writes. “The ballistic missiles, the Russian SS-20 and American Pershing II, could be driven on a mobile launcher into a remote area, blasted off, and strike their targets in less than six minutes. The short timeline gave world leaders little time run for cover — let alone strategize and react.” Read on, here.

The U.S. just sanctioned Iranian entities — again — while the country is still reeling from internal unrest that has resulted in large part from previous sanctions. On the receiving end of sanctions: “five entities tied to Iran’s ballistic-missile program…responsible for the development of guidance systems, solid propellants, motor cases and research for the country’s missile program,” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The White House line: “As the Iranian people suffer, their government and the IRGC fund foreign militants, terrorist groups, and human rights abuses. We will not hesitate to call out the regime’s economic mismanagement and diversion of significant resources to fund threatening missile systems at the expense of its citizenry,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Story — it’s another shorty — here.
An even bigger sanctions-related deadline will arrive on Jan. 12, when Trump faces the periodic decision to continue to waive the sanctions lifted in the 2015 nuclear deal. CNN, here.

And finally today, the more you know: Six years ago yesterday, the Obama administration announced its "pivot to the Pacific,” Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber reminds us.