President Barack Obama, in a widely anticipated speech tonight, announced a brisk drawdown of 33,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of next summer, and called more broadly for the U.S. to assume a more pragmatic approach to international interventions in order to focus on economic recovery and nation-building at home.

"We are a nation whose strength abroad has been anchored in opportunity for our citizens at home," Obama said in the brief twelve minute speech from the White House East Room. "Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times. Now, we must invest in America's greatest resource — our people."

"America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home," he said.

The United States had achieved significant progress in the counterterrorism goals Obama outlined when he ordered the surge of U.S. forces to Afghanistan in a speech at West Point in December 2009, he said. Among those goals: reversing Taliban gains in Afghanistan, degrading Al Qaeda's capabilities and eliminating several of its commanders in Pakistan, and building up the Afghan security forces to eventually be able to secure their own country.

But responding to growing American public impatience with the almost ten year old war and the continued economic crisis in the United States, Obama said the United States had to turn its focus now to nation building at home. Full Story »

In a widely anticipated White House speech tonight, President Obama announced his decision to withdraw 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 2012--10,000 of them to leave Afghanistan by the end of this year.

The number of troops scheduled for withdrawal over the next 15 months represents the contingent of troops ordered "surged" to Afghanistan in a December 2009 speech at West Point. That action brought the number of U.S. forces in  Afghanistan to about 100,000. Other NATO coalition partners have committed some 60,000 troops to Afghanistan.

The drawdown of the "West Point surge" will leave about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the end of next summer; the phased drawdown of U.S forces is scheduled to be completed by 2014. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said Afghan national security forces can take over responsibility for securing their country by that time.

Obama had been weighing whether to withdraw all of the surged forces by next summer as he considered conferred with his national security team on future war plans, according to officials familiar with the discussion. Still, the surge-scale drawdown wasn't reportedly the first choice of some U.S. military commanders, including the top U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus; those officials advocated a more gradual withdrawal of forces. Petraeus, who Obama has nominated to head the CIA, is due to leave Afghanistan in July.

The more rapid drawdown pace comes as new polls show for first time that a majority of Americans want U.S. forces to be brought home from Afghanistan--and as lawmakers in both parties are expressing growing impatience with the expense of the war. Full Story »

• A record number of Americans (56 percent) now favor removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. (Pew)

• The cost of war is a major factor as U.S. weighs Afghanistan troop levels. (New York Times)

• Few Taliban agree so far to switch sides. (New York Times)

• Obama to propose Chicago host a NATO summit on Afghanistan in May 2012. (Atlantic Council)

• China releases artist, activist Ai Weiwei on bail. (AP) Full Story »

The world's oceans are facing unprecedented decline, a new report by a panel of scientists and conservationists warns.

Ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history," the panel of scientists convened by the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said in a new report this week (.pdf), the BBC's Richard Black writes. The panel was made up of 27 scientists with a range of specialties from six countries, IPSO said.

Pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and overfishing are combining to accelerate environmental destruction of the seas and marine life at a more rapid pace than had been anticipated, the group found. One member of the panel, Prof. Jelle Bjeme, a marine science expert with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, explains in the YouTube video below:

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke up today in support of a campaign by Saudi women to get the right to drive in the conservative, oil-rich Persian Gulf kingdom.

"What these women are doing is brave and what they are seeking is right," Clinton said at a news conference today, Bloomberg News' Flavia Krause-Jackson reported.

"The effort belongs to them," Clinton said of the campaign by dozens of Saudi women last week to drive. "I am moved by it and I support them."

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As the conflict in Libya drags into its fourth month, Washington faces the latest in  a series of tests of its political will in the effort to depict American involvement in the struggle as a limited humanitarian action.

The dispute in Washington revolves chiefly around Congress's role in sanctioning an extended U.S. commitment in Libya, which began as a NATO-led effort to prevent the country's authoritarian leader Muammr Gadhafi from massacring Libyan citizens. The Obama White House says it has the authority to pursue what it calls limited military action in Libya without any formal consultation with Congress--while lawmakers on both sides of the partisan aisle argue that Obama needs formal congressional approval to pursue hostilities beyond 90 days.

Administration lawyers themselves have offered different legal opinions on the matter, the New York Times' Charlie Savage reports: Pentagon and Justice Department attorneys have advised the White House that it needs congressional approval, while White House and State Department attorneys say that any such consultation is unnecessary because the Libya action does not reflect formal "hostilities" between the United States and Libya.

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President Barack Obama will announce in a speech on Wednesday evening his plans for drawing down the additional 30,000 U.S. troops "surged" to Afghanistan last year, U.S. officials said.

The president has kept his decision on the matter under close advisement. Some members of his cabinet, including Vice President Joe Biden, have urged a swifter drawdown of surged forces in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden last month. Lawmakers from both parties have voiced growing frustration over the $2 billion a week the United States now spends on the war in Afghanistan.

However, defense officials, including outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have argued for a modest initial U.S. drawdown in order to maintain a robust U.S. fighting presence over the next two fighting seasons. Gates and other advocates of maintaining a larger troop presence say that it can keep delivering blows to the Taliban as the U.S. and Afghan governments open up negotiations to try to persuade insurgents to switch sides.

That policy debate has led to reports suggesting that Obama is weighing two possible options in framing future U.S. commitments. Full Story »

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad didn't win over any skeptics with his address to the nation today, urging a national dialogue and blaming saboteurs and foreign enemies for the unrest that has killed an estimated 1,400 Syrians.

Assad, speaking at Damascus University in his third address to the nation since anti-government protests erupted in March, appealed to the thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey to return home. Repeating a theme initially taken up by deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek when he was dismissing the popular uprisings in Tarhir Square, Assad blamed the unrest in his country on extremists who he claimed are taking direction from foreign conspirators.

"There can be no development without stability, and no reform through vandalism," Assad said, according to the Associated Press. "We have to isolate the saboteurs."

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• Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirms preliminary U.S. talks with the Taliban. (New York Times)

• Obama faces conflicting pressures on Afghanistan drawdown. (USA Today)

• Gen. David Petraeus says he is sole action officer in the field drawing up military options for Afghanistan for the president to prevent leaks. (Military Times)

• U.S. suspects Pakistan intelligence of tipping off insurgents ahead of raid on bomb factory. (New York Times)

• UN nuclear watchdog urges worldwide rethinking of nuclear safety after Fukushima. (Associated Press) Full Story »

In a call with Jewish leaders today, new White House Middle East adviser Steve Simon laid out the state of play in the current U.S. effort to re-launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks along the principles President Obama laid out in a series of speeches last month. According to notes from the call provided to The Envoy, the United States has received a mostly positive response to the U.S. proposal from the Palestinians and the Europeans, but is still waiting to see whether Israel will accept the framework for negotiations.

Obama suggested in a speech at the State Department last month that the Israelis and Palestinians return to the negotiating table, focusing first on the issues of security and borders for a future Palestinian state, which he said should be negotiated on 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.

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