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The article discusses U.S. president Barack Obama's decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 given a lack of a signed bilateral security agreement (B.S.A.) with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Topics addressed include the April 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan and the possibility that Karzai's successor will sign the agreement, as well as Obama's claim that any residual forces in Afghanistan will continue to shrink as the agreement goes unsigned.

The article reports on the decision of U.S. President Barack Obama to remove American troops in Afghanistan in 2013 which was viewed as a careful act of balancing military and political interests.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Obama, speaking to an American television audience on Tuesday night from Bagram Air Base, declared that he had traveled here to herald a new era in the relationship between the United States and Afghanistan, ''a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.'' Mr. Obama's address, during an unannounced visit to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai that sets the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014, was a chance for him to make an election-year case that he is winding down a costly and increasingly unpopular war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The killing of two American servicemen and the eruption of deadly anti-American protests in Afghanistan confronts President Obama with a potential political weakness in a foreign policy that has so far offered few easy targets to Republican candidates eager for an opening. But the White House and the Obama campaign believe that, if anything, the bloodshed in Afghanistan will reinforce the sentiments of a large majority of Americans who want to get the troops out of there as soon as possible. This, the president's aides said, will constrain Mitt Romney or other Republicans seeking to benefit from a perception that Mr. Obama's Afghan strategy has gone awry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America. Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the ''tide of war is receding.'' And in a blunt recognition of domestic economic strains, he said, ''America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama plans to announce his decision on the scale and pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in a speech on Wednesday evening, an administration official said Monday. As he closes in on a decision, another official said, Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

TALLINN, Estonia -- Setting the stage for a gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States and other NATO countries adopted a plan here Friday that sets conditions for beginning to remove troops from a lead role in Afghan provinces by the end of this year. The plan, which NATO hopes to turn into a formal agreement with the Afghan government in July, would transfer authority to Afghans when they have met three criteria: a competent local police force, a durable civilian government and signs of reconciliation with the Taliban insurgency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama sent his top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Europe on Thursday to press sometimes balky NATO allies to contribute thousands of additional troops to his new strategy for turning the tide in the Afghanistan war. Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that some countries were confused by Mr. Obama's plan to begin bringing home American troops in July 2011. But she said that, over all, ''The response has been positive,'' and that she would work to clear up doubts over the American timetable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nation's top military officer on Wednesday laid out a muscular defense of President Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but they made clear that his plan to begin withdrawing those forces by July 2011 was flexible. At two hearings on Capitol Hill, where they faced deep skepticism about different parts of Mr. Obama's war plan from both parties, they also said that the arrival of the additional forces, while speedy, would not be as fast as Mr. Obama suggested in a speech to the nation on Tuesday night. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]