Biden to veer from Trump, Obama policies in taking on North Korea
The White House said Friday that President Joe Biden plans to veer from the approaches of his two most recent predecessors as he tries to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, rejecting both Donald Trump’s deeply personal effort to win over Kim Jong Un and Barack Obama’s more hands-off approach.
Press secretary Jen Psaki announced administration officials had completed a review of US policy toward North Korea, seen as one of the greatest and most vexing national security threats facing the United States and its allies. Psaki did not detail findings of the review, but suggested the administration would seek a middle ground between Trump’s “grand bargain” and Obama’s “strategic patience” approaches.
“Our goal remains the complete de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula with a clear understanding that the efforts of the past four administrations have not achieved this objective,” Psaki told reporters on Air Force One as Biden travelled to Philadelphia.
The administration announced it would conduct the review soon after Biden took office in January. Psaki said officials consulted outside experts, allies and predecessors from several previous administrations as part of the process. Formal start of final phase of Afghan pullout by US, NATO
The final phase of ending America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan after 20 years formally began Saturday, with the withdrawal of the last US and NATO troops by the end of summer.
President Joe Biden had set May 1 as the official start of the withdrawal of the remaining forces — about 2,500-3,500 U.S. troops and about 7,000 NATO soldiers.
Even before Saturday, the herculean task of packing up had begun.
The military has been taking inventory, deciding what is shipped back to the US, what is handed to the Afghan security forces and what is sold as junk in Afghanistan’s markets. In recent weeks, the military has been flying out equipment on massive C-17 cargo planes.
The US is estimated to have spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan in the past two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University, which documents the hidden costs of the US military engagement.
Defence department officials and diplomats told The Associated Press the withdrawal has involved closing smaller bases over the last year. They said that since Biden announced the end-of-summer withdrawal date in mid-April, only roughly 60 military personnel had left the country.
The US and its NATO allies went into Afghanistan together on Oct. 7, 2001 to hunt the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks.