Afghanistan is America’s longest war, and it seems it could go on indefinitely, if only because, in shades of the Vietnam catastrophe, there is no face-saving way out, and national pride is very much at stake.

President Trump says he will “pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past” but has inherited a blunder he is going to find very difficult to resolve. The situation in Afghanistan is dire to the point of calamity, and while Mr Trump has not yet made his intentions clear it is difficult to imagine him approving negotiations with the Taliban, and equally hard to see him in the position of an “America First” Commander-in-Chief who ordered his forces to retreat.

Perhaps money might affect his final decision.

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