Afghanistan Strategy to wait until after ISIS?

It might be that the reason the Trump Administration is taking so long on a strategy for winning the Afghan war is because they wish to see ISIS defeated first.

Bush and Obama both began their presidencies more interested in Afghanistan, yet ended up more invested in Iraq; for Bush it was invading Iraq 18 months after Afghanistan and for Obama, it was returning to Iraq to defeat ISIS in 2014. Trump may just be doing the opposite: beginning his presidency more interested in Iraq and ending up more invested in Afghanistan.

Certainly the long Afghan policy review is welcome news for many, as it is always better to have a plan thoroughly reviewed and scrutinized before being implemented. But it might also be because the President's priorities are elsewhere in foreign policy: first with ISIS but also with North Korea.

The end of the war on ISIS is in sight. Raqqa is surrounded by the Syrian Kurds. The Syrian Arab Army is decimating ISIS across the desert of eastern Syria. Mosul has been retaken by the Iraqi Army. Tel Afar, Hawija and western Anbar are ISIS' last strongholds in Iraq. Abadi and Trump have agreed to keeping a residual US force in Iraq after the defeat of ISIS. Trump has stated the US is not going into Syria to remove Bashar Al-Assad.

Though Trump has said that after ISIS is defeated, he would spend more time invested in rebuilding America, in Afghanistan glints a desire to outshine Obama: Obama withdrew from Iraq in 2011, to return 3 years later to a country decimated by ISIS. Can Trump win a Bush-era war where Obama could not? He campaigned hard against the Obama doctrine, and is making all the right moves to push the US to victory in Afghanistan.

But it may just be that we will not see a coherent policy on Afghanistan until ISIS is defeated.