Mr. Biden assigned Jake Sullivan, his national protection adviser, to operate an interagency assessment of Afghanistan coverage that resulted in 10 meetings of division deputies, a few cabinet-level conferences and 4 conferences in the Situation Room that incorporated the president.
The Biden crew deemed other possibilities, such as trying to keep a smaller existence of troops for counterterrorism operations or to assistance Afghan protection forces, but reasoned that was just “magical thinking” and would get additional troops than was sustainable. They talked over no matter if to renegotiate the Trump settlement to extract much more concessions but the Taliban built crystal clear it would not return to the bargaining table and considered the Trump deal binding.
Mr. Biden’s advisers also viewed as extending the withdrawal deadline right until the wintertime, immediately after the standard combating season was above, to make the transition considerably less risky for the Afghan federal government. The Afghanistan Review Group, a bipartisan congressionally chartered panel that was led by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., a retired Joint Chiefs chairman and that provided Ms. O’Sullivan, in February advisable extending the Might 1 deadline and trying to find greater problems in advance of pulling out.
But Mr. Biden was warned by protection professionals that the lengthier it took to withdraw immediately after a final decision was announced, the far more hazardous it would develop into, aides explained, so he extended it only until finally Aug. 31.
Specifically influential on Mr. Biden, aides claimed, had been a collection of intelligence assessments he requested about Afghanistan’s neighbors and close to neighbors, which discovered that Russia and China needed the United States to continue to be bogged down in Afghanistan.
At the stop of the day, then, the officers explained just about every alternative ultimately led to one particular of the two top alternate options — get out altogether, as Mr. Trump experienced agreed to do, or put together for a extended and extra dangerous shooting war with a lot of a lot more troops. Though not anyone in the home desired Mr. Biden’s route, officers maintained that absolutely everyone was heard.
“Biden mainly faced the similar problem that Trump confronted,” claimed Vali Nasr, who was a senior adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s specific agent on Afghanistan and Pakistan, “and his solution was the exact same — we’re not heading to go again in, we have to get out.”