WASHINGTON– The U.S. military should withdraw from Afghanistan because a negotiated peace is unlikely and because the situation there no longer is a significant threat to the U.S.,going against the Trump administration’s decision to send more troops to the country, several national security and military experts said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump recently announced he will send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan with the goal of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Former Army officials and national security experts at the libertarian Cato Institute mostly agreed that while a settlement is the way out, it is unlikely to happen.
George Washington University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Stephen Biddle said he doubted the U.S.’s ability to win the war.
“We are not going to win the war; we can maintain a stalemate, but we aren’t kicking the Taliban out of control.”
Biddle further said the U.S. must negotiate with the Taliban and reach a compromise.
“We are dangerously close to keeping the war on life support and hoping for a miracle,” he said. “Settlement is the only alternative to failure.”
However, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon said negotiation is not an option and supports the troop size increase in Afghanistan.
“I fear that because the Taliban thinks they are winning, the only negotiation they will accept is complete surrender,” he said.
O’Hanlon noted that the Afghan government has lost control of about 10 percent of the country to the Taliban.
“We have to reverse their momentum,” he said. “Trump’s strategy will get us to that place of reversing momentum.”
While O’Hanlon supports Trump’s mission on Afghanistan, he said a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops will not be possible during the president’s first term.
“You shouldn’t support [Trump’s] strategy if you believe we can come home within five years,” he said.
“A complete departure won’t be possible in that time; the most I would aspire for is a downsize.”
It also is unlikely Americans would support a settlement, either, said Cato Institute Vice President of Foreign Policy Studies Christopher Preble.
Americans prefer victory to negotiations withdrawals, he said. “We will not accept a victory unless it looks like that of Aug. 14, 1945,” Preble said, referring to the Japanese surrender in World War II.
Genevieve Wood, senior communication adviser at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal website, said the United States and its allies should not leave Afghanistan before they finish “their job.”
“As the Trump administration considers the way forward, it’s important to remember the goal of our mission,” she said, describing it as training and funding the Afghan military so “it will eventually be able to stop interference from outside powers and prevent the establishment of terror bases.”