The Evening: North Korea, Syria, Billy Gibbons and More

Good Evening,

It's Tuesday, June 20th.

North Korea

A day after American college student Otto Warmbier, who spent 17 months in captivity in Pyongyang, died at his home in Cincinnati, President Trump called his treatment “a total disgrace” and suggested he has given up hope that Beijing can exert meaningful leverage on dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime, as the Washington Post’s David Nakamura reports.

Dive deeper:
See the Atlantic’s July/August cover story, “How to Deal with North Korea,” by Mark Bowden.

And, see CSIS’s interactive micro-websites “Beyond Parallel” and “Missile Threat.”

Plus, see Brookings’ “What the United States should do about the death of Otto Warmbier,” by Jonathan Pollack and Evans Revere.

Syria

Syrian government troops and their allies have steadily positioned themselves in key areas on the flanks of the U.S.-led coalition battle for the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, as the AP’s Sarah El Deeb reports.

And, the Pentagon today confirmed the death of a senior member of ISIS, Turki al-Bin’ali, “the self proclaimed ‘Grand Mufti,’ or chief cleric of ISIS,” as the Hill’s Ellen Mitchell reports.

Dive deeper:
CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman has a commentary: “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, ISIS, and Iran: Is ‘Half’ a Strategy Better than None?”

Ukraine Meeting

President Trump told Ukraine’s president today that he hoped to see a resolution to the country’s crisis but stopped short of publicly endorsing a 2015 accord calling for an end to Kremlin backing for pro-Russian separatist rebels, as Reuters’ Steve Holland and Joel Schectman report.

In That Number

$43.23

U.S. crude for July delivery lost 97 cents, or 2.2%, to $43.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, trading at prices it hasn’t settled below since last summer. Source: WSJ.

Critical Quote

“Military force must be tied to policy objectives and embedded in a broader foreign policy strategy if it is to succeed.”

— CSIS’s Kathleen Hicks in testimony today before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

iDeas Lab

The Andreas C. Dracopoulos iDeas Lab at CSIS enhances our research with the latest in cutting-edge web technologies, design, and video.

CSIS's Beyond Parallel goes beyond the headlines to tackle the major issues surrounding the Korean peninsula. Explore oral histories, original datasets, threat forecasts and more at beyondparallel.csis.org.

Optics

An Iraqi forces member fires a 23-mm antiaircraft gun as they advance toward the Old City of Mosul during an ongoing offensive to retake the last district still held by the Islamic State. (Photo credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images.)

Recommended Reading

“The Trump administration is working to free American hostages in Iran,” by the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin.

This Town Tomorrow

Join CSIS at 10:00 a.m. for the launch of Bloomberg New Energy Finance's New Energy Outlook 2017 report.

Also at 10:00 a.m. CSIS hosts a discussion on how best to support and harness Sub-Saharan Africa’s tremendous potential for economic growth.

And at 2:00 p.m. CSIS will host a two-session event to highlight and amplify awareness of the implications of emerging space technologies.

Finally at 4:00 p.m. join us for a discussion on Souad Mekhennet’s book “I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journal Behind the Lines of Jihad.”

Join the United Nations Foundation at 6:00 p.m. for a conversation focused on dispelling common myths and misconceptions about refugees.

And join the Carnegie Endowment at 3:30 p.m. for a discussion on current trends in innovation and economically sound decarbonization efforts across key sectors.

On Demand

On World Refugee Day, watch our October event on how international organizations can contribute to solving the global refugee crisis.

Sounds

The latest CSIS Podcast “Going Cold on Cuba” sits down with Mark Feierstein, a senior official responsible for opening Cuba under President Obama, to discuss what Trump’s policy shift means for US-Cuba relations.

Smiles

I’m just back from a nice little jaunt to Los Angeles. The Santa Monica/Venice/Malibu area to be exact. It turns out that rock and roll is still a big, big deal in this part of the country. You hear it everywhere. In LA, rock and roll is still studied by some and practiced by many. That’s one reason why I love it so much.

Venice, the former haunt of Jim Morrison and many other rockers, is still all about rock and roll. I don’t mean Muscle Beach or the Venice Boardwalk although they are not without a certain charm.

I’m talking about a few streets off the beach, the places that really capture Venice’s current and past essence. There’s a satisfying mix of upscale and funky shops and restaurants on Abbot Kinney and ramshackle joints like Baby Blues BBQ on Lincoln Boulevard. Baby Blues has a welcoming vibe even though some of the heavily tattooed patrons might look a bit intimidating to some. But that’s just eclectic LA and it works.

Prominently hung on the wall in Baby Blues is a painting of ZZ Top’s legendary guitarist Billy Gibbons. It’s striking. Gibbons, who looks like a heavily bearded biker baddie is actually a soft-spoken vegetarian. And substantively, he’s intellectualized guitar playing beyond just about any of his fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. While enjoying some terrific barbeque and listening to one great song after another at just the right volume over the restaurant’s speakers, I took in this painting of Gibbons and I thought about him.

This is a great clip of Gibbons performing one of his ZZ Top classics “La Grange” on “Live at Daryl’s House.” You’ll even get a sense of Gibbons as the guitar scholar toward the end. What a smile. I love LA.

I invite you to email me at aschwartz@csis.org and follow me on Twitter @handrewschwartz