When President Joe Biden made the decision on April 14 to withdraw the remaining 2,500 US troops from Afghanistan, along with those of NATO, he was rejecting pressure from senior military officers, starting with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, to keep a residual military presence in the country. Politico reported later that same day that when Biden was weighing a complete withdrawal, top military leaders advocated for keeping a small U.S. presence on the ground, made up primarily of special operations forces and paramilitary advisers, arguing that a force of a few thousand troops was needed to keep the Taliban in check and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for terrorists. Milley, as well as the four-star commanders of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, Central Command, and Special Operations Command, were emphatic proponents of this strategy, according to nine current and former officials who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity. “But in the end,” Politico reported, “Biden and his top national security deputies did what no previous president has done successfully — they overrode the brass.”
The advice of the top brass was likely very close to that of the Afghanistan Study Group, a body set up by Congress in December of 2019 tasked with identifying policy recommendations that “consider the implications of a peace settlement, or the failure to reach a settlement, on U.S. policy, resources, and commitments in Afghanistan.” The study group, co-chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and former Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and hosted and supported by the US Institute for Peace, issued its recommendations on Feb. 3, 2021. It’s report concluded that “there is a real opportunity to align U.S. policies, actions, and messaging behind achieving a durable peace settlement to end four decades of violent conflict in Afghanistan.”
The most important revision of US policy that the report recommended was “to ensure that a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops is based not on an inflexible timeline but on all parties fulfilling their commitments, including the Taliban making good on its promises to contain terrorist groups and reduce violence against the Afghan people, and making compromises to achieve a political settlement.” In other words, it was to be a “conditions-based” withdrawal. This was the advice that Biden rejected.
