US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Monday said that he wants to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan “with or without” a peace agreement in order to give higher priority to strategic competition with China.
The administration of US President Donald Trump is expected to announce plans to withdraw about 4,000 troops from Afghanistan, according to US media, after peace talks resumed a week ago between the US and the Taliban.
Esper told reporters that US Army General Austin Miller, the head of the NATO mission and US forces in Afghanistan, “is confident that he can go down to a lower number” of troops.
Miller “believes he can conduct all the important counterterrorism missions and train, advise and assist” the Afghan National Army, Esper said on an airplane as he flew back from Belgium, where he had attended the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.
“I would like to go to a lower number, because I want to either bring those troops home” to retrain for new missions or to “be redeployed to the Indo-Pacific to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China,” Esper said.
“At the end of the day, the best solution for Afghanistan is a political agreement” between the government and the Taliban, he said.
“But I think we can go down with or without that political agreement,” he added.
Esper said that he had not yet ordered any downsizing, adding that the decision was ultimately the responsibility of US President Donald Trump.
About 13,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates according to rotations.
Trump last month said that he planned to cut the overall troop presence to 8,600, with further reductions possible.
He also insisted on the need for a ceasefire and made an unannounced visit to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan to celebrate Thanksgiving with troops and meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
The Republican president has previously indicated that he wants to wind down US military entanglements abroad where possible.
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