00:00Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
00:04No, it is not.
00:06Why?
00:07Because you have the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped, as well-equipped as any army in the world,
00:16and an air force, against something like 75,000 Taliban.
00:22It is not inevitable.
00:24Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
00:29That is not true.
00:31Can you please clarify what they have told you about, whether that will happen or not?
00:35That is not true.
00:37They did not reach that conclusion.
00:40So what is the level of confidence that they have that it will not collapse?
00:45The Afghan government and leadership has to come together.
00:51They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.
00:57The question is, will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it?
01:03It's not a question of whether they have the capacity.
01:05They have the capacity.
01:07They have the forces.
01:08They have the equipment.
01:10The question is, will they do it?
01:12And I want to make clear, what I made clear to Ghani, that we are not going to walk away
01:18and not sustain their ability to maintain that force.
01:21We are.
01:22We're going to also work to make sure we help them in terms of everything from food necessities and other
01:27things in the region.
01:29But there is not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban.
01:37I believe the only way there's going to be – this is now Joe Biden, not the intelligence community –
01:42the only way there's ultimately going to be peace and security in Afghanistan is that they work out a modus
01:47vivendi with the Taliban and they make a judgment as to how they can make peace.
01:53And the likelihood there's going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.
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