Today's D Brief: Myanmar coup; Tracing Trump’s subversion; Destroyer quarantined; New life for New START; And a bit more.
Coup in Myanmar: Military leaders from the Southeast Asian country known variously as Myanmar and Burma seized power Sunday evening in a series of moves that threaten the struggling democracy just south of China. Key leaders were detained by the military overnight, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy advocate who had served as state counsellor since 2016.
The military’s commander-in-chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing is now in charge, and he’s currently operating on the assumption he will retain this position of power for 12 months.
Why the coup? Because Hlaing and his officers believe “the government had not acted on the military’s [unsubstantiated] claims of fraud in November’s elections — in which Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party won most of the parliamentary seats up for grabs — and because it allowed the election to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic,” AP reported.
No evidence of fraud: Last week, the country’s elections commission reviewed the military’s charges of massive fraud, and rejected them as unsubstantiated. The charges resembled the ones made by the military after the population widely rejected its rule in 2011, Reuters writes.
Why now? “The generals made their move hours before parliament had been due to sit for the first time since the NLD’s landslide win” in that Nov. 8 election, Reuters reports. That election was “viewed as a referendum on Suu Kyi’s fledgling democratic rule.”
Big picture: The coup marks “a dramatic backslide for Myanmar, which was emerging from decades of strict military rule and international isolation that began in 1962,” the Associated Press reports. “It was also a shocking fall from power for Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate who had lived under house arrest for years as she tried to push her country toward democracy and then became its de facto leader after her National League for Democracy won elections in 2015.”
U.S. vows “action”: On Sunday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki released a statement: “The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed.”
From Defense One
USAF Goes Commercial for Project-Management App // Marcus Weisgerber: The service aims to accelerate its digitization by adopting product lifecycle management software already used by industry.
Pentagon Advisory Boards Need to Offer 10X Ideas, Not 10% Ones // Steve Blank, Joe Felter, and Raj Shah: DoD's 40-plus boards must be restructured to help the department think far bigger.
If Austin Is Serious about Preventing Sexual Assault, Why Is Hyten Still Vice Chief? // Don Christensen: The Air Force general was never cleared of nine alleged incidents of unwanted sexual contact.
The Next Steps For the Pentagon's AI Hub // Chris Bassler and Bryan Durkee: Six ways the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center can accelerate the military’s use of AI.
Trying to Box in Biden on Arms Control // James Acton and Steven Pifer: Former Trump officials complain that the new president doesn’t want what they failed to achieve.
Defense Business Brief // Marcus Weisgerber: Who’s up, down in 2020 earnings; Frozen exports; Leader moves; and more...
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1942 and almost two months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy began its first offensive missions against the Japanese Navy, targeting garrisons in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.
Everyone aboard the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile destroyer Chafee disembarked and went into quarantine at hotels across San Diego this weekend after an unspecified number tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, Navy Times reported Saturday.
It’s not clear what will happen next, or when, with the warship, which “was in town for Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training, or SWATT, and was supposed to head back to Hawaii this weekend.” Continue reading here.
Panning out: More than 441,000 people in the United States have died of COVID — more than live in Oakland, California. Daily deaths remain above 3,000, as they have for most of January. But new daily cases are down about one-third over the past two weeks, with hospitalizations also dropping. (NYT)
On Friday. SecDef Austin dropped by to visit some of the National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., to protect buildings like the Capitol from right-wing extremists. D.C. National Guard Commander Army Brig. Gen. Janeen Birckhead tagged along with Austin, Military Times’ Meghann Myers reported shortly afterward.
“Austin walked a line of Guardsmen posted along Constitution Avenue, including soldiers from Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Georgia, California, Minnesota and Maryland,” Myers reported. “Austin asked the soldiers about their lives back home, what they do for a living, whether they left behind spouses and children and how they spend their free time. One was a car salesman with a fiance, another a student studying criminal justice.”
The SecDef’s message, as conveyed to a soldier from Michigan: “I just want to say thanks for what you're doing. [I] really appreciate you leaving home, and family, to come out here and help us defend the Capitol. Stay alert, take care of yourself. If you need something, don't hesitate to let your chain of command know.”
Before the insurrection: Retrace 77 days of the “Big Lie” from former President Donald John Trump, who “attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years.” His campaign is recounted in painstaking detail by seven reporters from the New York Times.
Related: How to reason with a loved one you may consider unreasonable? Adam Grant of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has a few ideas, writing in the op-ed section of the NYTs. In short, it concerns a concept called “motivational interviewing.” That is, don’t try to change the loved one’s mind outright. “Instead, help them find their own motivation to change,” Grant advises.
Why this technique is worth your attention: “In controlled trials, motivational interviewing has helped people to stop smoking, abusing drugs and alcohol, and gambling; to improve their diets and exercise; to overcome eating disorders; and to lose weight. The approach has also motivated students to get a good night’s sleep; voters to reconsider their prejudices; and divorcing parents to reach settlements.” More here.
ICYMI on Friday: New START gets a new life. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the key arms control treaty that Associated Press called “the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States a week before the pact was due to expire.”
Context: “The treaty, signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.”
Read more from Stanford’s Steven Pifer and and James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in Defense One on Friday, here.