$ 317 million a day for 20 years. On the cost of the failure of the United States in Afghanistan and its consequences

On August 26, information appeared in the world press about the research project Cost of War, carried out by the American Brown University. According to the data published on its results, the total cumulative costs of the US military mission in Afghanistan and individual operations in neighboring Pakistan amounted to $ 2,31 trillion, or $ 317 million daily for twenty years.

The figure is not that high, but astronomical. For example, the sum of all reparations received by the victor countries from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles for damage caused during the First World War, taking into account inflation, would amount to only 287 billion dollars today - less than 13% of what the United States spent on the war in Afghanistan. But the reparations included absolutely all expenses that, in the opinion of the Entente countries, were the results of the actions of the German military machine. Germany, by the way, finished paying them only in 2010, more than 90 years later.



It is clear that the comparison is not very correct, given the changes in the level of weapons and social security of servicemen. Nevertheless, spending eight times more on one mission in Afghanistan than on a world war and de facto failing it is still something to try. And for years.

The war in Afghanistan was fought under four American presidents and twelve defense ministers. Before the start of the military operation, the US leadership set a number of goals for it: overthrowing the Taliban regime, liberating the territory of Afghanistan from their influence, seizing and trying members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group (banned in the Russian Federation). Twenty years later, it is obvious: the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is fully restored, and its influence, in conditions when the conduct of new military operations in Afghanistan looks almost incredible, is becoming stronger than ever. The promise to bring al-Qaeda members to justice was largely limited to their physical elimination. Moreover, on August 27, a Taliban representative in an interview with the American television channel NBC said that there is no evidence of the involvement of the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It is clear that the United States sent troops to Afghanistan not only because of world terrorism. One of the reasons was the desire to prove to themselves and the world community that the Americans are ready to cope with any of their opponents, regardless of where they are located. However, the end of the Cold War and the accession of a unipolar world, obviously, did not benefit the States themselves. Euphoria and relaxation, interspersed with such mundane events for the stronghold of democracy and humanism as the bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia in 1999, suddenly ended with the September 11 attacks, which the American special services frankly missed.

The USA does not negotiate with terrorists, they destroy them

The famous boastful thesis, expressed in 2008 by the press secretary of the Bush Jr.-era White House Scott McLellan, turned out to be as deceitful as it is hypocritical. In less than fifteen years, the President of the United States, the "leader of the free world", will not only be at the same table with representatives of the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), but will also conclude an agreement with them on the withdrawal of troops. An agreement much more like surrender than a peace treaty will not only clearly outline the fact that the Taliban is recognized as an international force, but will also demonstrate the entire weakness of the American position in a strategically important region for it.

And as the practice of recent months shows, this agreement is hardly worth the paper on which it is written, for the Taliban are not going to fulfill even its key provisions. His clause on the obligatory start of negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government looks especially indicative today, given that the latter has de facto ceased to exist as a result of the Taliban's offensive. Moreover, the reason for this development of events lies not so much in the negotiability of the Taliban, but in their clear awareness that the US opinion can be safely ignored. The loss of American influence in Afghan territory turned out to be so drastic and catastrophic. And when the Taliban in the course of the summer blitzkrieg, in fact, seize all power in the country, the question will already arise as to whether it will allow the American military to complete the evacuation.


- This is how the journalist of the American channel Fox News, Jennifer Griffin, describes the situation.

However, it cannot be said that the United States does not understand its position and does not seek to bargain for a little more time in one way or another. For example, one such option may well be the transfer to the Taliban of a list containing the names of Afghan citizens to be evacuated.

According to some sources of the authoritative American publication Politico, this measure is aimed at speeding up the process of evacuating people from Afghanistan, while his other interlocutors note that the authors of such a decision "just put all these Afghans on the execution list." Simply put, the Americans, without the slightest hesitation, simply surrendered all the Afghans who worked for them. Although it is obvious that each of them has not only the closest family members who, in a successful scenario, may and will manage to get out of Afghanistan, but also more distant relatives, friends, neighbors. It is not hard to guess that the first people to whom the Taliban will come with questions will be precisely these people, so openly exposed by the fleeing Americans under attack.

Results and consequences

In addition to 70 civilian casualties and 75 deaths among Afghan government forces, the main result of the American military presence can already quite definitely be considered the crowds of refugees rushing to leave the country. Including convulsively clinging to the landing gear of departing American planes and crashing on the runway when falling from a height.

Some of them refused to evacuate the United States, some - their allies. The United States justified this by the lack of documentary evidence of the assistance of the American army. The Allies went even further, simply refusing to take out anyone other than their own citizens and their families.

As a result, today it becomes obvious that there will be no new liberation operations on the territory of Afghanistan in the coming years. Neither the United States nor its allies. America began a military operation in Afghanistan under the banner of an uncompromising struggle against the Taliban movement, and ended with the signing of a peace treaty with them, de facto recognizing its complete defeat. The reasons for such a miserable performance by the country with the world's largest military budget, of course, will be considered in more than one textbook on military affairs, but another is important.

It is important that the Afghan defeat, which many experts already call the new American "Vietnam", if it does not lead to tectonic changes in the American foreign policy, it will at least change the attitude of the world to its geopolitical adventures. The countries that entered Afghanistan together with the Americans, albeit within the framework of the UN mandate "knocked out" by Washington, in fact, did not receive anything other than the corpses of their soldiers who died thousands of kilometers from home in a war to which they had nothing to do. As a result, peaceful Afghans were left alone with the Taliban in a devastated country that survived another war. Probably, this is exactly what justice looks like in the American way.