The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan had an embassy in Washington D.C., as well as consulates in New York City and Los Angeles. Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement On 2 May 2012, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States President Barack Obama signed a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries, after President Obama arrived in Kabul as part of unannounced trip to Afghanistan on the first anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. The U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement, officially entitled the "Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America", provides the long-term framework for the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States of America after the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan war. The Strategic Partnership Agreement went into effect on July 4, 2012, as stated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said on July 8, 2012, at the Tokyo Conference on Afghanistan: "Like a number of countries represented here, the United States and Afghanistan signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement that went into effect four days ago." On 7 July 2012, as part of the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement, the United States designated Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Kabul to meet with President Karzai. She said, "There are a number of benefits that accrue to countries that have this designation... They are able to have access to excess defense supplies, for example, and they can be part of certain kinds of training and capacity building." Military withdrawal and the Ghani administration The United States Armed Forces have been periodically rising and reducing its troop level in Afghanistan since 2002, reaching a high of about 100,000 in 2010. This was followed by a slow reduction of troops from mid-2011 to the end of 2014. However, Vice President Joe Biden proposed to station more U.S. military forces after 2014. In January 2017, the U.S. decided to send 300 Marines to Afghanistan's Helmand province to assist Afghan security forces to battle Taliban insurgents in intelligence and logistics matters. American and Afghan officials said after Afghanistan's designation as major non-NATO by the United States in July 2012 that they now must turn to working out a deal that would keep a residual American force in Afghanistan to continue training Afghan soldiers and tracking down insurgents after 2014. Talks on the arrangement have not yet begun