Blinken, Austin dissuaded Biden from pulling all troops from Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden’s top cabinet members unsuccessfully tried to dissuade him from pulling all US troops from Afghanistan, hoping he would leverage the withdrawal to seek a political settlement, a new book says.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pushed for a slower drawdown to encourage negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government, according to “Peril,” a forthcoming book by famed investigative journalist Bob Woodward co-authored with his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa.

Blinken, a longtime aide to Biden who had previously staunchly backed his plan to end the 20-year war, called the president from Brussels after hearing concerns from NATO ministers in a March meeting, the book says.“His new recommendation was to extend the mission with US troops for a while to see if it could yield a political settlement. Buy time for negotiations,” it says, according to a passage published by CNN.