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It was a strange thing, listening to Army Secretary Mark Esper’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. The gulf war veteran, former Capitol Hill adviser and Raytheon executive answered questions about his lobbyist past, Iran, China, Russia, the space force, hacking, the Southwest border, securing the 2020 elections and more.

But nothing about Afghanistan. Nothing about Iraq. There was one query about withdrawing troops from Syria. Niger, where four Americans died two years ago in a brutal ambush by Islamic State fighters and where American troops still patrol? Nothing. America’s long wars on terrorism disappeared, at least for a few hours. These conflicts are so tiresome that they don’t even merit a mention during the confirmation hearing of the man nominated to be the next secretary of defense — or as it was once known, the secretary of war.

But between the lines, that void highlighted the Pentagon’s motives to shift the narrative away from being mired in unending wars in the Middle East to basically insurance policies, which is how former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster described the war in Afghanistan in May. And at the heart of those insurance policies are small numbers of American troops, mostly Special Operations forces, fighting alongside local forces in other conflict zones like Syria, Iraq and Somalia. McMaster argued that those alliances could offset the billions of dollars in costs.