National security adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly offered to resign after the botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 service members dead — but President Biden urged him to stay on, leading to a rift with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Sullivan said he was prepared to quit after the US evacuation didn’t go as planned and culminated in the deadly bombing at Abbey Gate outside of Kabul International Airport, aides to the national security adviser told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.
Biden, 82, had been pushing for the speedy withdrawal — and apparently told him to remain at his post — after the pullout in August 2021, a deicision that ultimately divided commander-in-chief’s national security team.
“You cannot end a war like Afghanistan, where you’ve built up dependencies and pathologies, without the end being complex and challenging,” Sullivan told Ignatius.
“The choice was: Leave, and it would not be easy, or stay forever,” he went on, arguing that “leaving Kabul freed the [United States] to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in ways that might have been impossible if we had stayed.”
Sullivan had been reluctant about ending the US presence in Afghanistan, initially agreeing with the Pentagon that 2,500 troops should be left to hold down Kabul.
But he changed his mind to agree with the president and Pentagon, with defense officials arguing that would ensure the most safety.
Sullivan would soon have to face Russia invading Ukraine in February 2022 — and revealed in the interview that CIA chief William Burns threatened US involvement if the Kremlin dropped a nuclear bomb in Ukraine.
“If you’re national security adviser, and the intelligence community says that the risk of the use of nuclear weapons is material, you don’t have the luxury of waving that off. That’s the difference between sitting in this seat and not sitting in this seat,” he said.
Despite two wars erupting on his watch, including Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel of more than 1,200, Sullivan still gave his administration high marks for dealing with international crises over the past four years.
“Are our alliances stronger? Yes. Are our enemies weaker? Yes. Did we keep America out of war? Yes. Did we improve our strategic position in the competition with China while stabilizing the relationship? Yes. Did we strengthen the engines of American economic and technological power? Yes,” he recited.
Reps for the White House and the National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
