Looking on the positive side, Trump confessed to changing his mind and did lay out the stakes in the region. Restating that it will be up to Afghans ultimately to secure their country and that the United States would commit to helping them arrive at that goal while putting pressure on Pakistan was reassuring. Former ambassador Eric Edelman recapped the positive elements:
He didn’t pull out or heed the blandishments of [Stephen K.] Bannon and [Erik] Prince to build a mercenary army to fight the war. Making our policy conditions-based rather than subject to artificial deadlines is certainly an improvement over the previous Administration’s approach, but truth be told [Barack] Obama himself had abandoned the timelines he had originally set by the end of his Administration. Less micromanagement from Washington is clearly better than young, inexperienced staffers pestering commanders in the field with endless, politically based intrusions into the war fighter’s work. Recognizing, as Trump did, that Pakistan is an immensely important part of the problem is hardly a new insight — [George W.] Bush and Obama both realized it but how to deal with it is the $64,000 dollar question and on that the President was silent. Recognition of India as an important part of the regional equation and the danger of the delicate balance of nuclear terror on the South Asian subcontinent is welcome, but again the President had little to say about what the U.S. will do about it.