Top US national security officials will see how the failed war in Afghanistan may be reshaping America's relationships in the Middle East as they meet with key allies in the Persian Gulf and Europe this week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are traveling to the Gulf separately, leaving Sunday. They will talk with leaders who are central to US efforts to prevent a resurgence of extremist threats in Afghanistan, some of whom were partners in the 20-year fight against the Taliban.
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Together, the Austin and Blinken trips are meant to reassure Gulf allies that President Joe Biden's decision to end the US war in Afghanistan in order to focus more on other security challenges like China and Russia does not foretell an abandonment of US partners in the Middle East. The US military has had a presence in the Gulf for decades, including the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Biden has not suggested ending that presence, but he – like the Trump administration before him – has called China the No. 1 security priority, along with strategic challenges from Russia.
"There's nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more, in this competition than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan," Biden said in the hours after the last US troops left.
In announcing his Gulf trip, Austin told a Pentagon news conference that staying focused on terrorist threats means relentless efforts against "any threat to the American people from any place," even as the United States places a new focus on strategic challenges from China.
Blinken travels to Qatar and will also stop in Germany to see Afghan evacuees at Ramstein air base who are awaiting clearance to travel to the United States. While there he will join a virtual meeting with counterparts from 20 nations on the way ahead in Afghanistan.
"The secretary will convey the United States' gratitude to the German government for being an invaluable partner in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and for German cooperation on transit operations moving people out of Afghanistan," spokesman Ned Price said Friday.
Austin plans to start his trip by thanking the leaders of Qatar for their cooperation during the Kabul airlift that helped clear an initially clogged pipeline of desperate evacuees. In addition to permitting the use of al-Udeid air base for US processing of evacuees, Qatar agreed to host the American diplomatic mission that withdrew from Kabul at war's end. The Qataris also have offered a hand to help reopen the Kabul airport in cooperation with the Taliban.
During a stop in Bahrain, Austin plans to speak with Marines who spent weeks at Kabul airport executing a frantic and dangerous evacuation of Afghans, Americans and others. Eleven Marines were killed and 15 were wounded in a suicide bombing at the airport on Aug. 26. That attack killed a total of 13 US service members and scores of Afghan civilians.
The Pentagon chief also planned to visit Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and to meet with senior leaders in a region he knows well as a retired Army general and former head of US Central Command with responsibility for all military operations there.
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