(NewsNation) — The United States is attempting to reestablish a military presence at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump said Thursday.
At a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump slammed former President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and lamented that his predecessor gave the air base up “for nothing.”
“We’re trying to get it back, by the way,” he said, adding that the base is located “an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”
Trump called the idea “breaking news” on Thursday, though he has previously raised the idea, according to the Associated Press.
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Bagram, located in Afghanistan’s Parwan Province, was a U.S. stronghold for two decades until troops withdrew from the region in a widely criticized operation in 2020.
Hal Kempfer, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer and national security analyst, told NewsNation it would take “an incredible effort” to retake the airfield, as there are no official diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Afghanistan.
Calling it a “big shift” in thinking, Kempfer cast doubt on whether Trump’s plan would be feasible: “When I heard that, I was trying to think, how would we even begin negotiations with the Taliban government?”
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The move could only be accomplished through negotiations, Kempfer said, not by force.
“There would have to be some incredible carrot for the Taliban government to accept us back in,” he said. “Because that really goes against the entire political outlook and ideology. To allow the U.S. back in there, it would be a huge hit on them domestically.”
