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34,000 U.S. Troops to Exit Afghanistan Within a Year 34,000 U.S. Troops to Exit Afghanistan Within a Year
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to announce in his State of Union address on Tuesday night that half of the 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan will be home by this time next year, according to an administration official familiar with the speech. WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decision to remove half of the 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan by this time next year represents a careful balancing of political interests and military requirements.
The decision by Mr. Obama represents a careful balancing of political interests and military requirements. The announcement enables him to say that slightly more than half of the American force — 34,000 troops — will be out of Afghanistan by next February, keeping on track a plan to hand over security responsibility to Afghan troops by the end of 2014. The decision, which administration officials disclosed on Tuesday and which Mr. Obama planned to highlight in his State of the Union address, enables the White House to say that slightly more than half of the American force — 34,000 troops — will be out of Afghanistan by the end of February 2014.
But the plan also gives the military commanders in Afghanistan the flexibility they have long sought in determining the pace of the reductions. Under the phased withdrawal, according to the official, who asked not to be identified discussing the speech, commanders will have a “robust force” for the next fighting season, which ends in September and October. But it also gives the military commanders in Afghanistan flexibility in determining the pace of the reductions and will enable them to retain a substantial force until after the next fighting season, which ends in October. That, according to administration officials, satisfies one of the major concerns of Gen. John R. Allen, who recently left his post as the top commander in Afghanistan.
The commanders want to hold on to sufficient forces — including troops, airpower and medical evacuation units — to support the Afghan troops during this transition. They also want to try to consolidate military gains before rapidly drawing down American forces. At the same time, officials said, it rebuffs arguments by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pull out troops more quickly.
At the same time, the official said, the pace of the drawdown will be rapid enough that it will prod Afghan forces to take on greater responsibility for securing the country. The danger of leaving too many American troops for too long, he said, is that the security situation could “go off a cliff” after the United States largely withdraws. From the start, the Afghan issue has been a double-edged sword for the White House. Mr. Obama campaigned for his first term on the premise that the conflict was a “war of necessity” to deprive Al Qaeda of a potential sanctuary in Afghanistan, and in 2009 he ordered a surge of more than 30,000 troops.
Afghan troops are scheduled to move into a lead role this spring, under an accelerated transition of security responsibility that Mr. Obama announced when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan visited Washington last month. Mr. Obama planned to call Mr. Karzai later on Tuesday morning to inform him of the planned announcement. As the war dragged on, and the 2012 presidential election approached, Mr. Obama began to take troops out of Afghanistan on a more expedited schedule than his commander at the time, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had recommended. Mr. Obama’s talk of a war of necessity was supplanted by his refrain that the “tide of war is receding.”
The president, an official said, will make no announcement about how many forces the United States should keep in Afghanistan after 2014 when the security mission is entirely the responsibility of the Afghans. Mr. Obama, he said, has not yet made a decision on that. But since his re-election, Mr. Obama has confronted the question of how to stay true to his pledge to wind down the war without undermining still fragile military gains. Presidents in their second term often tend to think about their foreign policy legacy, and the conflict in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has come to be known as Mr. Obama’s war.
White House officials did not provide a detailed timetable for withdrawal this year, saying only that it would be “phased.” The troop withdrawal question came to the fore last month after Mr. Obama met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in Washington. As he had done before, Mr. Obama set the parameters of the deliberations over the troop level by issuing planning guidance to the Pentagon.
But an American official involved with the planning, who asked not to be identified, said that he expected the number to come down to about 60,000 troops this spring. That force would remain through the fighting season after which there would be a steep drop to about 32,000 by this time next year. Operating on the basis of those presidential instructions, which the White House has not made public, General Allen prepared three options. Administration officials said that the White House had essentially endorsed the general’s preferred option.
Mr. Obama’s reference to Afghanistan will be one of relatively few nods to national security in the State of the Union address. The official said he would refer briefly to North Korea, which American and South Korean officials said tested a nuclear weapon on earlier on Tuesday. According to the current withdrawal schedule, the number of troops is to go down to 60,500 by the end of May. By the end of November, the number will be down to 52,000. By the end of February 2014, the troop level is to be around 32,000.
The February 2014 number is less than some military officers had hoped would be on hand when the Afghan presidential election is held that April. But that seems to be more than offset by the decision to allow the military to keep the bulk of its force through the 2013 fighting season.
“The intensity of combat in the warmer months is twice what it is in colder months,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution. “For the next eight months, it is as good an outcome as proponents of the current strategy could have had.”
Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that withdrawing half of the American troops over a year would reduce the chances of success because insurgents still have safe havens in the eastern part of Afghanistan and it is not clear whether Afghan forces would be able to maintain control of the southern part of the country with an extremely limited coalition presence.
“But if the command really does have the flexibility to control the pace of the withdrawal and to bring about a short-term increase of specialized units, then a chance of campaign success remains,” Mr. Kagan said.
Another central issue is how many troops the United States should keep in Afghanistan after 2014, when the security mission is to shift entirely to the Afghans.
Administration officials said last year that they would determine the size and composition of the post-2014 American presence before determining the withdrawal schedule for 2013 and 2014. But on Tuesday officials said that Mr. Obama had not yet made a decision on the post-2014 force, which is likely to number no more than 9,000 or so and then get progressively smaller.
There still appears to be debate within the administration about plans for that period. Officials said there was a reluctance to go public with a final number of troops and a description of their missions while still being in the early stage of negotiating a security agreement with the Afghans over retaining a post-2014 presence.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, said in an interview on Sunday that the troop numbers the Obama administration appeared to favor for the next few years looked sufficient.
The Afghan government is eager to convey the impression that it is calling the shots, and Mr. Karzai has long called for American troops to leave Afghan villages and stay out of Afghan homes.
“I am not a friend of the big numbers,” Mr. Spanta said.

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.