Not a thickness of paper between his and Trump’s policy in the region. I wonder what it means for the counter insurgency operations in Africa as Daesh and there like expand into sub-Saharan states. The mention of Yemen is interesting considering the pressure to lessen support for SA in that conflict.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a...ance-r2s2cvwhs
Afghanistan is not worth more US lives, says Joe Biden as Taliban advance
President Biden insisted that fears of a bloody Taliban takeover of Afghanistan would not reverse the US troop withdrawal as fighting raged in the west of the country for control of a provincial capital.
With the Pentagon saying that the pull-out was “90 per cent complete”, Biden, 78, said that the US mission would be over by August 31 and that the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces had to take responsibility for
defending the government of President Ghani amid fears that Kabul would soon come under attack….
The president said that the US would continue to provide military training and humanitarian assistance but made clear that he was not willing to risk any more American lives in an Afghan civil war….
It was “not in the national interest to continue fighting” now that al-Qaeda had been defeated there, he added.
“I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,” he said…..
Jen Psaki, Biden’s spokeswoman, conceded that “it is a 20-year war that has not been won militarily” but said that “we did exactly what we intended to do”.
The threat from al-Qaeda and Islamic State now came from other countries such as Syria, Yemen and Somalia, she said.…
The spiralling violence in northern Afghanistan has stoked fears in the surrounding former Soviet republics that ethnic tensions within their own countries could be ignited…..
Russia has said it will step in to protect the former Soviet states if it has to.