President Obama is considering a full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, The New York Times reports in an anonymously sourced article. Obama is winding down the U.S. military campaign by the end of 2014. U.S. troops are scheduled to be reduced down to 34,000 by February 2014. However, those troops may not stay past the end of the year.
Obama is becoming "increasingly frustrated" with Karzai and their relationship "has been slowly unraveling". The Obama administration had been negotiating with the Karzai government over conditions to leave a "residual" U.S. force in Afghanistan post-2014, but those talks have not gone well.
Total military withdrawal of the 63,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan "has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario" to now as viable alternative. Obama is giving "serious consideration" to the "zero option", which would leave no American troops in Afghanistan after next year.