Tonight, President Trump will address the nation on his strategy for the war in Afghanistan. The televised speech will take place at 9 p.m.
Trump to address U.S. amid expectations he’ll authorize 4,000 additional troops
AMMAN, JORDAN — President Donald Trump has settled on a new military strategy in Afghanistan after months of bitter internal debates by his national security team and will announce a plan Monday expected to provide U.S. commanders with additional troops and broader authority to pursue militant forces.
Trump is expected to authorize about 4,000 more U.S. troops for counterterrorism missions, as well as U.S. advisers to work closer to the front lines with Afghan military officers in America’s longest war.
The new forces will join the 8,400 U.S. and 5,000 NATO troops who now train and advise Afghan security forces as they seek to quell a resurgent Taliban, Islamic State militants and other militias that have plunged the war-torn nation into deeper chaos over the last year.
The strategy also is expected to try to pressure Pakistan, a nominal U.S. ally, to take greater measures to crack down on Taliban insurgents and other militant groups that launch crossborder raids into Afghanistan.
In a statement, the White House said Trump would address the nation at 9 p.m. EDT Monday from Ft. Meyer, Va., outside Washington, instead of the White House or the New Jersey golf resort where he has spent most of the month.
Trump will “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement” in Afghanistan and South Asia, the statement said.
The strategy comes as U.S. military officials have warned of Afghanistan’s fast-worsening security situation. The United Nations said 11,418 civilians were killed last year – the most since the U.N. began keeping records in 2009.
Eleven U.S. troops have been killed there this year, compared with nine all last year.
Trump’s decision emerged from a meeting he held Friday with Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other top advisers at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a rustic compound in rural Maryland.
“The process was rigorous,” Mattis said Sunday, speaking to reporters in Amman, Jordan, as he visited the region. “And it involved all members of the Cabinet, of the national security staff, writ large.”
Without going into detail, Mattis said the strategy “involves significant allies,” presumably members of the NATO coalition that have fought at America’s side in Afghanistan since the invasion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“The president has made a decision,” Mattis said. “I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous.”
“It is a South Asia strategy,” he added. “It is not just an Afghanistan strategy.”
Adding more U.S. forces would reverse President Barack Obama’s decision last year to withdraw 1,200 troops. Obama declared an end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan in 2014.
Trump has said little in public about America’s longest war, either as a candidate or in the White House. He ran on a platform of reducing American foreign military entanglements, and during his first seven months in office, he has balked at authorizing more troops.
He repeatedly deferred making a decision as his chief advisers produced multiple proposals for resolving the long conflict.
Some in the administration, including recently ousted strategic adviser Steve Bannon, questioned the goal of sending more Americans into a war that has dragged on for nearly 16 years without producing a clear result, according to U.S. officials who asked not to be identified revealing internal discussions.
Bannon instead reportedly advocated outsourcing of the conflict to what many in the military establishment consider mercenaries, rather than sending in more troops, as Mattis and others had urged.