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— President Joe Biden overruled the generals on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

— The administration is moving ahead with a $23 billion arms sale to the UAE.

— Ukraine is better prepared to fend off Russia, but NATO membership is still far off.

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The House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will hear testimony from the U.S. Southern Command chief at 10 a.m.

The House Armed Services Committee will hear testimony from the commander of U.S. European Command at 11 a.m.

And HASC’s Military Personnel Subcommittee holds a hearing with the inspectors general of the military services at 4 p.m.

Check out the Pro calendar for a full schedule of events.

THE BUCK STOPS: Biden on Wednesday did what President Donald Trump had hoped to accomplish: order the end of America’s involvement in the Afghanistan war.

“We cannot continue this cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal and expecting a different result,” Biden said in a speech announcing the decision. “I'm now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.”

He declared all American troops will leave the country by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And in the process, he overruled his top military advisers, POLITICO’s Lara Seligman, Andrew Desiderio, Natasha Bertrand and Nahal Toosi report for Pros.

Among the fiercest proponents of sticking it out were Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and the commanders in Afghanistan, the wider Middle East, and of special operations troops, who warned that Afghanistan could once again become a haven for terrorists. But in the end, Biden carried through on what he failed to persuade President Barack Obama to do when he was vice president.

“President Biden has made a judgment that those are manageable concerns and not as important as drawing American participation to an end, and so everybody shut up and did it,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also announced that the estimated 7,000 alliance troops will also leave. “This is not an easy decision, and this is a decision that contains risks and a decision that requires that we continue to stay focused on Afghanistan,” he said. “This is not an end, but the beginning of a new way of dealing with Afghanistan.”

Lawmakers from both parties want to know what that will look like. “First, what will the security architecture look like to ensure that terrorists don’t reconstitute and prepare attacks against us or our allies?” asked Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former Pentagon and intelligence official. “Secondly, what is the diplomatic plan for maintaining some insight and leverage in Kabul? We’ll need a significant diplomatic plan to ensure Kabul isn’t descending into chaos.”

The top Republicans on the Armed Services Committees also called on Biden to reverse course. “It is irresponsible to leave when conditions on the ground would lead to a civil war in Afghanistan and allow the country to become a safe haven for terrorists once again,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklah.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in a joint statement.

Related: Petraeus trashes Biden decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, via Defense One.

And: The crucial questions for Afghanistan, via The New York Times.

Plus: U.S. plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan hampers peace talks with Taliban, via The Wall Street Journal.

WAR DIVIDEND? What does a U.S. withdrawal mean for the defense budget? Consultant Jim McAleese did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate the move could free up somewhere in the range of $21 billion next year that at least theoretically could be applied to other needs.

That’s the amount designated in this year’s budget for “direct-combat-requirements,” he points out, for operations and maintenance, military personnel, procurement, and research and development. “Consequently, this unexpected action could potentially provide up to an additional ~+$21B of topline DoD funding for currently under-resourced missions,” McAleese concludes.

NNSA HEAD TAPPED: Biden on Wednesday named Jill Hruby to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration, the arm of the Department of Energy that manages the atomic weapons arsenal, our colleague Connor O'Brien reports for Pros. Hruby, a mechanical engineer, was the first woman to serve as director of a national weapons lab.

UAE DEAL PROCEEDS: The news that the State Department is moving ahead with the $23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates approved in the waning days of the Trump administration set off a new round of criticism on Wednesday that the Biden administration is not sufficiently weighing the human cost.

The decision ”contradicts its pledge to make human rights and long-term U.S. interests the central factors in deciding which nations to supply with U.S. arms,” said William Hartung, head of the Arms and Security Program at the progressive Center for International Policy. “The UAE is an unreliable partner that has fueled conflict, transferred U.S.-supplied weapons to extremist groups, and inflicted severe human rights abuses on its own population.”

He cited in particular UAE’s military support for Gen. Khalifa Haftar in Libya, “in violation of a United Nations arms embargo.”

A State Department spokesperson maintained there’s sufficient time to address concerns, adding that they will “continue reviewing details and consulting with Emirati officials to ensure we have developed mutual understandings with respect to Emirati obligations before, during, and after delivery.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also said he has ”many concerns,” but Congress can still intervene before the F-35 fighter jets, drones and munitions are delivered over the next several years. “Fortunately, none of these transfers would occur any time soon, so there will be ample time for Congress to review whether these transfers should go forward and what restrictions and conditions would be imposed,” Meeks told POLITICO in a statement.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit group that filed a federal lawsuit over the sale is amending its complaint. “We had hoped that the Biden Administration would have put the mitigation of the humanitarian crises in Libya and Yemen above starting what could be an arms race in this sensitive region of the world,” Justin Thomas Russell, director of the New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs, said Wednesday. “We had hoped for better things out of the Biden Administration and now those hopes have been dashed.”

Related: U.S. is expected to approve some arms sales to UAE and Saudis, via The New York Times.

‘BATTLE-HARDENED’: Russia and Ukraine both held military drills on Wednesday as NATO leaders conferred about Moscow’s latest military threat to its neighbor.

But the battlefield situation is quite different than it was in 2014, when Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula on behalf of Russian separatists and Ukraine’s military put up relatively little resistance, POLITICO Europe’s Dan Peleschuk reports from Kyiv.

“Today, the military is battle-hardened and better equipped, thanks to years of low-intensity conflict and increasing domestic and foreign support,” he writes. “But as fears grow of renewed hostilities — bolstered by evidence of what U.S. officials claim is the largest Russian troop buildup since 2014 — experts say Ukraine would still be hard-pressed to beat back a full-scale Russian invasion.”

Still, Ukraine is hoping it is a better candidate for eventual NATO membership. “Ukraine spent 3.4 percent of its GDP on defense in 2019, up from 2.2 percent in 2014, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,” Peleschuk reports.

Meanwhile, “255,000 active military personnel and another 900,000 reservists, according to the Global Firepower Index; Russia has 1 million active military personnel and another 2 million reservists.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Ukraine to eventually join NATO; the military implemented 96 NATO standards in the first 18 months of his presidency compared to 196 during the five years of his predecessor, according to a new paper by the Kyiv-based New Europe Center.

Related: As NATO meets, Ukraine says Russia could store nuclear weapons in Crimea, via Reuters.

Reginald Robinson, a retired Air Force colonel who was BAE Systems’ director for executive branch government relations, has been named vice president of executive branch and international government relations.

Tom McIntyre, most recently deputy director of the NRO’s Office of Space Launch, is the new director of government relations at Ball Aerospace.

— No charges for police officer in Capitol riot shooting death of Air Force veteran: The Associated Press

— Soldiers involved in flying helicopter low over DC protesters have been disciplined, Army says: Military.com

— Drone attacks Iraq airport housing U.S. troops: The Wall Street Journal

— Biden team believes Austin Tice, journalist missing in Syria, is alive: McClatchy

— Intel chiefs sound alarm on China in global threats hearing: POLITICO Pro

— What was America doing in Afghanistan? The Atlantic

— Restoring nuclear bipartisanship: War on the Rocks

— DoD steps back from decision to disinter remains believed to be Medal of Honor recipient: Stars and Stripes