Taliban peace deal part of broader US goal to refocus on China, Defense Secretary Mark Esper says

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Secretary Esper says US, Taliban have proposal for 7-day 'reduction in violence' plan

While details remain unclear, the proposal is not a cease-fire; Lucas Tomlinson reports from the Pentagon.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday said President Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban, which opens the door for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, is part of a broader goal to refocus the United States’ military resources on preparing for a potential future war with China.

Speaking in Kabul, Esper expressed the need for the U.S. to stay a step ahead of China and Russia on the battlefield, including in space and in strategic weapons such as hypersonic missiles and advanced nuclear weapons.

To do more to prepare for the China challenge, Esper said, the U.S. must reduce commitments in lower-priority regions so more military units could train together at home on skills related to conventional warfare.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, right, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks during a joint news conference in presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020.  (AP)

Predecessors in the Pentagon have shown similar hopes, only to be drawn back to crises in the broader Middle East. In the past year alone, the U.S. has sent an extra 20,000 troops to the Middle East, mainly due to worries about Iran.

The Pentagon has not publicly spelled out a precise timetable for troop reductions in Afghanistan, but Esper has said the peace deal signed Saturday in Doha, Qatar, by U.S. officials and Taliban representatives, triggered the start of a drawdown from the current total of nearly 13,000 to about 8,600, similar to the number Trump inherited when he entered the White House three years ago.

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Esper spoke of the prospects for a complete withdrawal while cautioning that the United States "will not hesitate" to strike terrorist threats in Afghanistan if the Taliban were to falter in its promise to prevent extremist groups from using Afghan soil to launch attacks on the homelands of the U.S. or its allies.

"We still have a long way to go," Esper said.

Late last year, the defense secretary said he would be willing to reduce troop levels even if no deal could be made with the Taliban.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday said the U.S. will hold the Taliban and Afghan national security forces to their commitments to reduce the level of violence and predicted a "rocky and bumpy" path ahead.

"It's not about trust, it's about what happens on the ground not only yesterday, which was an important day, but in the days to follow," he told CBS News' "Face the Nation."

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Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told a House committee on Wednesday, "The whole thing is dependent upon conditions and dependent upon Taliban behavior."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.