It's not exactly a surprise move: Trump has already signaled publicly that he intends to drawdown several thousand troops from the country. But that massive expenditure has yielded little that can be declared as a clear victory. In reality, both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began as regime-change operations, and then morphed into more open-ended missions. In September, Trump unexpectedly called off formal talks after a Taliban-claimed attack in Kabul killed a dozen people, including a US soldier. But on a surprise Thanksgiving visit to troops in Afghanistan, Trump offered another reveal: peace talks with the Taliban had restarted.

Source: CNN December 15, 2019 19:07 UTC