 The US Secretary of State there, Rex Tillerson. Joining me from Washington is Andrew Wilder from the Asia Center at the US Institute of Peace. He's been in charge of the Institute's Afghanistan program. It's good to see you. Thanks very much indeed for joining us. I'm really interested in this focus that there seems to be on India and what India can do to try and help America deal with the Afghanistan question. How much of a change do you believe this is from past administrations in bringing India into the fold in this area? Well, I think there is continuity in terms of what the overall objective is in Afghanistan in terms of wanting to prevent it from becoming a safe haven for transnational terrorist groups again. So I think that's constant. But we have seen some changes in emphasis in the new Trump policy, in particular by not stating the timeframe to withdrawal troops or focusing so much on troop numbers, which I think is also positive because in the past I think we focused so much on troop numbers that that sort of became the strategy rather than the tactic to support the overall objectives. But the other area which is different, as you noted, is I think more focus on having a regional approach to resolving the conflict. And I think that's positive. But I am personally puzzled a little bit by the emphasis on India. So on the one hand, we want Pakistan to be more cooperative. And yet the number one reason why Pakistan is interfering in Afghanistan and providing safe havens to the Taliban and the Hakani network is because they want to ensure that that's an asset to guard their interests in Afghanistan against what they perceive to be Indian interference. So if you're basically asking India to do more in Afghanistan, if anything, you risk further fueling the concerns in Pakistan that Indian influence in their western border and the neighbor to the west is going to grow and further threaten Pakistan interests in Afghanistan. So again, trying to ask India to do more, I actually think can be counterproductive. But as you say, you point to one more of a regional holistic approach, I suppose you could say, getting regional players more involved. And that obviously includes India. But if you get India and Pakistan around the table, which it seems to be what Rex Tillerson and President Trump want to do in trying to sort out what's going on in Afghanistan, then perhaps Washington can say to to Delhi, well, you stop meddling and Pakistan stop meddling and everyone will be better off. Well, yeah, and I think that we should be having more focus on Indo-Pac conflict because ultimately the Indo-Pac tension I think is fueling a lot of the conflicts in the region and including in Afghanistan. But I think that's that's where there's been some, you know, difference, certainly an emphasis between President Trump's speech, which focused lots more on the military angle. We're there to kill terrorists. And I think it was, you know, very helpful for Secretary Tillerson to emphasize that no, we need a more of a diplomatic and a political approach as well. Because I think if there's one lesson from Afghanistan as well as Iraq is that sort of simply killing bad guys, you know, it doesn't win the war. And, you know, where I think that the real opportunity lies in Afghanistan is, you know, I'm actually encouraged that we're sending a modest increase in terms of military support. But clearly that's not going to be sufficient to defeat the Taliban. But it could be part of a stick to try to incentivize the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. But then we need to have a much more robust political strategy, including this regional piece, to incentivize the Taliban to come to the table and get Afghanistan's neighbors to play ball with that. And I think in particular, if we can be clear to Afghanistan's neighbors, not just Pakistan, that the U.S. is actually really interested in bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan so that we can then withdraw our troops, I think we might get more cooperation in the region. Yeah, I mean, Lyndon Johnson focused on the body count in Vietnam, George W. Bush focused on the body count in Iraq. And we know what happened there. But given that there seems to be a little bit of conflict between what Rex Tillerson is saying and what President Trump is saying, Freudian slip there, who do we believe? Well, at this point, I'd like to think that they're complementary. I think for the speech that President Trump needed to give yesterday, including appealing to his base already as your feature before this mentioned, there's a bit of a U-turn from what he campaigned on to what he gave in his speech. And so first, I'm certainly someone here who's very happy. He didn't follow his gut instincts of simply precipitously withdrawing from Afghanistan, because then we know that the result of that would probably be state collapse and a return to anarchy, which would be bad for Afghanistan as well as the region, as well as the U.S. And so I'm glad he actually listened to his advisors and changed his policy on that. But then again, I'm hoping he will follow the advice of Secretary Tillerson and give a lot more attention to the need, attention to the need for a diplomatic and a political strategy to complement what I think will also be an important military strategy. I mean, are there really elements within the Taliban who can be spoken to, negotiated with, as Rex Tillerson and by extension the president seem to suggest? I think there are, but I also think that's a proposition to be tested. Up until now, I don't think, frankly, in the last 16 years, the U.S. has ever seriously suggested that we're interested in a peace deal, politically negotiated under the conflict. Sometimes we've paid lip service to it, but it's our military policy that's always dominated. Also, when your policy as it was under the Obama administration was, is we want to withdraw by 2016, if you're the Taliban, why negotiate if your adversary is about to withdraw pretty much all foreign troops from Afghanistan, wait until they're withdrawn and then try to win on the battlefield? The fact that the Trump administration is now signaling that we're not going to withdraw, and I think along with our NATO allies are going to remain engaged, that combined with a more robust regional strategy and I think some incentives for those Taliban who want to negotiate to come to the negotiating table, I wouldn't rule it out as an impossibility. I mean, I think some of the Taliban themselves are tired of fighting after so many years and as much as the Afghan national security forces and are taking out the Taliban as well. So I do think that there's elements that would be interested in a politically negotiated end to the conflict. Andrew Wilder from the Asia Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thanks for joining us, Andrew. Thank you.