National security adviser Jake Sullivan defended President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, arguing that history had vindicated the move.
In an appearance on CNN's State of the Union during his last full week in office, Sullivan was pressed on one of the most controversial episodes of Biden's presidency. Sullivan said the whole national security team bears responsibility for parts of the withdrawal from Afghanistan that went wrong, but he defended the move overall, arguing that it put the United States in a better position today.
“The strategic call President Biden made, looking back three years, history has judged well and will continue to judge well,” he argued.
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“From the point of view that, if we were still in Afghanistan today, Americans would be fighting and dying; Russia would have more leverage over us; we would be less able to respond to the major strategic challenges we face,” Sullivan continued.
As for threats of renewed terrorism due to Taliban control, Sullivan pointed to the recent New Year's Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and how there hadn't been any connection between the attacker and Afghanistan.
“Now, the FBI will continue to look for foreign connections. Maybe we’ll find one, but what we’ve seen is proof of what President Biden said, which is that the terrorist threat has gotten more diffuse and more metastasized elsewhere, including homegrown extremists here in the United States who have committed terrorist attacks,” he said. “Not just under President Biden, but under President Trump in his first term.”
Sullivan argued that the changing terrorist threat required the U.S. to shift its focus from a concerted war in Afghanistan into "a larger counterterrorism effort across the world."
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In other parts of the interview, the outgoing national security adviser argued that the U.S.'s strategic position is in a much better place than when Biden took office, saying that the U.S.'s alliances in Europe and the Pacific were the strongest they had been "in decades."
Sullivan declined to comment on President-elect Donald Trump's strategic vision, saying that he wouldn't be an "armchair quarterback" regarding the incoming president's stance on Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal.