Today's Headlines and Commentary

The New York Times writes that a 90-minute meeting between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to broker a ceasefire in Syria’s ongoing civil war. The two world leaders met on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, but Obama said, “given the gaps of trust that exist, that’s a tough negotiation, and we haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work.” Still, Obama said he has instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to continue negotiating with his Russian counterpart this week to see if a deal over Syria is possible. Russia’s back-pedaling on past deals with the United States has left Washington distrustful of any sustainable partnership with Moscow.

The Washington Post adds that Obama stressed the importance of a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, but said he would not strike an agreement in Syria that was not in line with his long-term objectives in the region. Obama and Putin also discussed the security situation in Ukraine and the ongoing disputes over cyberespionage between Russia and the United States. Obama declined to answer a reporter’s question about Russia’s alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, citing an ongoing investigation.

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The Times reports that Russian airstrikes helped Syrian forces allied with the regime seize critical territory on the outskirts of Aleppo on Monday. The move tightens the siege on rebel-held positions and came as Obama met with Putin to discuss a ceasefire. Battles have intensified across Syria’s multi-sided war in recent weeks. According to analysts, this signals that combatants are seeking to press their advantage on the ground either to bypass the talks or strengthen their position at the table.

Suicide attacks across government-controlled areas in Syria killed at least 48 people and wounded dozens. The five strikes, which hit the cities of Homs, Tartous, Damascus, and Hasak, were all claimed by the Islamic State. A double-tap attack in Tartous, a loyalist base of Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s government, was the deadliest and claimed at least 35 lives. The Washington Post has more.

The Guardian reports that Ezzit Raad, the Australian terrorist who was jailed in 2005 for plotting to bomb a stadium in Melbourne, was killed while fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. The Islamic State announced the news in the inaugural edition of its latest publication, Rumiyah, which also called for lone wolves to launch attacks against Australia. Raad’s obituary urged readers to “stab them, shoot them, poison them and run them down with your vehicles.”

A car bombing claimed by ISIS struck a bustling commercial area of central Baghdad overnight, killing at least 12 civilians. More than two dozen other individuals were wounded. The terrorist organization said the strike had been targeted at Shiites. In July, an Islamic State bombing in another commercial part of Baghdad killed more than 300 people. Baghdad’s citizens have grown frustrated at their government’s inability to protect its Shiite population adequately.

The Times tells us that the U.S. military’s reliance on drones against the Islamic State and other actors has resulted in a shortage of Air Force pilots and other personnel to operate the aircraft. As such, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on contractors to help on reconnaissance missions in Iraq and Syria. Legal academics said there is a danger that a growing reliance on contractors could pose problems of accountability and oversight, particularly given the sensitive missions and cutting-edge technology at hand.

Twin bombings near the Afghan Defense Ministry in Kabul killed at least 24 people on Monday, including two security force generals, a district police chief, and five other police officers. A Public Health Ministry spokesman said another 91 people were wounded. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which the attackers wore military uniforms to target security forces. The Associated Press has more.

According to the New York Times, Afghan security forces killed three terrorists who attempted to execute an overnight assault on the offices of a humanitarian organization hours after the attack on the Defense Ministry. Though the attack on CARE International in downtown Kabul was thwarted, six civilians were wounded. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said police special forces saved the lives of 42 civilians, including ten foreign citizens. Afghan security officials speculated that the Haqqani network, an organization linked with the Taliban that specializes in brutal urban assaults, was responsible for the attack.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Adel al Jubeir briefed British MPs personally to urge them not to ban United Kingdom’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia in light of a claim by the United Nations that British weapons were used to conduct indiscriminate attacks in Yemen on hospitals, markets, and cities. In a report to Parliament, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has insisted that Britain’s arms sales can continue because there is no evidence of a serious risk that London could be violating international law.

Haaretz reports that Israel is weighing the possibility of permitting representatives of the prosecution of the International Criminal Court to visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the coming weeks. The visit would be in the context of a preliminary inquiry into Palestine’s complaints against Israel's 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and settlement construction in the West Bank. ICC representatives would not be gathering evidence during this visit, but engaging in dialogue about the preliminary inquiry process. Al Jazeera has more on whether this could eventually lead to Israeli officials being tried for war crimes.

Reuters reported that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko acknowledged that it is increasingly difficult for Ukraine to secure Western support in its fight against "Russian aggression,” adding that a full-scale invasion from Russia cannot be ruled out. Poroshenko’s concerns come as tensions between Ukraine and Russia have heightened in recent weeks and Ukrainian troops continue to clash with pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region. Poroshenko also warned that elections across the continent in 2017 could empower political forces more willing to compromise with Moscow.

German and Latvian troops have begun a joint exercise near the Russian border in Latvia, as an effort to demonstrate NATO’s commitment to protect against a Russian attack. NATO leaders agreed in July to move four battalions totalling between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to the Baltic states and eastern Poland for the first time, as well as to increase air and sea patrols to reassure those countries following Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Both Latvia and Estonia are home to significant ethnically Russian populations, who officials fear could be galvanized to fight on Moscow’s behalf much as Russian separatists have fomented instability in Ukraine. Reuters has more.

The Washington Post writes that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating whether Russia is conducting a broad covert operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions. The FBI has alerted local and state officials of potential cyber threats to the electoral process. Both leading Republican and Democratic lawmakers have urged the president to take a tougher position against Russia to deter future cyber attacks against America’s electoral system. The Hill notes President Obama’s comments regarding the importance of “instituting some norms so that everybody’s acting responsibly.”

The Journal writes that China’s Foreign Ministry has blamed the U.S. media for the imbroglio over President Barack Obama’s exit from Air Force One and onto the tarmac in Hangzhou for the G20 summit. Chinese personnel both refused to let U.S. personnel roll out the standard stairway transported around the world for Air Force One and also prevented National Security Advisor Susan Rice from reaching the presidential party. Though Western media outlets have painted the fracas as a deliberate act by the Chinese to humiliate Obama, a spokesman for the Chinese government blamed the botched greeting on “dozens of U.S. reporters” rushing a Chinese security cordon.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called on his military to continue nuclear weapons development after issuing orders for the latest test-firing of ballistic missiles. His remarks came after North Korea test-fired three missiles into the sea on Monday as the G20 summit unfolded in China. A South Korean defense ministry official said the missiles were fired in Japan’s direction and constituted a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The New York Times has more on the missile tests.

The Washington Post reports that the Philippines has asked China to explain the presence of a larger-than-usual number of ships near the Scarborough Shoal after a Philippines Air Force overflight said it saw at least eight ships near the disputed shoal. Manila’s observation raises the prospect of a new round of tensions in the South China Sea. While analysts had long suspected that Beijing—which has rejected a verdict from an international court undercutting its claims to the shoal—would ultimately build on Scarborough, many were surprised that Beijing would be willing to escalate tensions while in the midst of hosting the G20 summit.

President Barack Obama nixed a meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte after Duterte made a series of bombastic comments. While warning that the United States should not bring up his approach to human rights, Duterte referred to Obama in Tagalog as a “son of a bitch.” Obama maintained that the United States would remain a close partner of the Philippines despite swapping his meeting with Duterte for a meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye during a regional summit in Laos.

During his visit to Laos, President Obama announced that the United States will spend an additional $90 million to help Laos clear unexploded ordnance remaining from the U.S. bombing campaign during the Vietnam War. The United States spent $100 million in the preceding 20 years to help Laos clear its UXO, which has killed or injured 20,000 people. Obama is the first sitting president to visit Laos.

The Associated Press fills us in on a report that former Guantanamo detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who briefly disappeared from Uruguay for several weeks after being resettled there along with five other former detainees, is weak from a hunger strike and could need to be hospitalized. Dhiab, who suffers health problems related to his hunger strikes and forced feedings while in U.S. custody, has repeatedly said he is unhappy in Uruguay and demanded that he be allowed to leave the country.

John Bolton and Michael Mukasey have co-authored an editorial in the Wall Street Journal urging Congress to reject the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would create an exception to sovereign immunity if a plaintiff claims to have suffered injury in the United States from state-sponsored terrorism. They claim that JASTA will harm U.S. counterterrorism interests more than it will help by inviting other countries to create exceptions to sovereign immunity, which could hamper America’s diplomatic, clandestine, and military campaigns abroad.

ICYMI: This Weekend, on Lawfare

Herb Lin contemplated a nightmare scenario in which a foreign cyber hacker could manipulate voter registrations to interfere with our electoral process.

C. Christine Fair, Ali Hamza, and Rebecca Heller revealed that large swathes of Bangladesh’s public hold disturbingly supportive views towards extremism and militancy.

Benjamin Wittes challenged the folks at FiveThirtyEight and other statisticians to test their algorithms against his homespun model.

Quinta Jurecic uploaded the latest episode of The Lawfare Podcast, in which Michel Paradis, the counsel for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Bob Loeb, a former government prosecutor, discuss the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent ruling in the Nashiri case with Ben.

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