In private chat with senator, Trump hints at policy shift in Afghanistan - washingtonpost

In the days leading up to a key vote last week over the fate of his nominee for secretary of state, President Trump found a way to win over one of the biggest skeptics in the Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), a rare noninterventionist Republican, was signaling that he would oppose Trump’s pick, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a hawkish former congressman who had backed the Iraq War.

But the more Trump and Paul spoke, including three calls April 23, the more assured Paul became that the president was moving back toward the noninterventionist worldview that Trump had championed on the campaign trail. The conversations left Paul with a particularly enticing notion: that Trump was prepared to end the war in Afghanistan.

“The president told me over and over again in general we’re getting the hell out of there,” Paul said in an interview Thursday in his Senate office. “I think the president’s instincts and inclination are to resolve the Afghan conflict.”

The two men discussed no exit dates and did not strike a written agreement, as Trump urged Paul to meet one-on-one with Pompeo and ultimately secured the senator’s support ahead of a key Foreign Relations Committee vote that paved the way for confirmation.

It is unclear just how much Trump’s private conversations signal a public shift in policy or, rather, if they are just maneuvering by a famously transactional leader who often says what he needs to say to make a deal and then reverses himself. The White House declined to comment for this story, but an official confirmed the outlines of the interactions that Paul described.

Nonetheless, Trump’s talks with Paul reflect an area of growing tension between the president, whose instinct is to pull out from overseas entanglements, and his military, whose leaders argue that swift withdrawals would spark dangerous instability. In Afghanistan, one indication of the military’s nervousness is its eagerness to open peace talks with the Taliban and try to negotiate an end to the conflict.

The Trump-Paul conversations also point to an effort by the dovish senator and former Trump rival, long treated by his party as a foreign policy gadfly, to assert influence over a president who chafes at being managed by his advisers and the Republican foreign policy establishment.

The odds are steep for Paul, even as he tries to nudge Trump into being more like Trump, or at least the Trump he came to know on the campaign trail. Paul’s efforts have been complicated by a recent spate of attacks in the country, including two bombings Monday that killed at least 25 people. An affiliate of the Islamic State asserted responsibility.

The White House is increasingly full of hawks, such as national security adviser John Bolton, whose views Paul has fiercely opposed. And Trump has long been courted by Paul’s foreign policy nemesis in the Senate, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

“Senator Paul is an outlier,” Graham said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Monday that Trump had not given any indication that he wants to withdraw from Afghanistan.

We’re there to do a job. We’re not there to stay forever. But the job comes first,” he said. “Matter of fact, we have a number of nations looking to add forces as we speak.”

There are signs that Trump is increasingly coming around to Paul’s message on Afghanistan and a host of other foreign policy issues. - Read More

In private chat with senator, Trump hints at policy shift in Afghanistan

Afghan security forces declining in number, U.S. inspector general report shows