Launched two wars, the United States destroyed two countries (global hot spots)
As two foreign wars launched by the United States since the end of the Cold War and in the new century, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War took an extremely long time and cost a lot of money. Instead of bringing peace, stability and prosperity to these two Middle Eastern countries, they created more. Divide, turmoil and poverty.
Two wars completely destroyed two countries.
Reflecting on the two wars, some questions cannot be avoided: Why did the two wars occur in the first place?
What did the United States get after all the painstaking efforts to launch two wars?
Slapped and left, leaving a mess of mess. What kind of bane has been planted by the United States, which is eager to get away, to the situation in the Middle East and regional security?
Faced with a devastated country and chaotic situation, where will the future of Iraq and Afghanistan go?
When we mourn for the lives and civilizations that have eternally disappeared in the flames of war, when we pray for the people and the land that are still groaning and suffering in the war, mankind should not talk about war lightly.
Beginning of war: the weak and the strong
In 2001, after the "9.11" incident that shocked the world, although the Taliban issued a statement stating that the terrorist incident had nothing to do with Bin Laden, the US government still identified Bin Laden as the number one suspect in the terrorist attack.
On October 7, 2001, the then-U.S. President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. military had launched attacks on terrorist organizations and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.
"These targeted actions are aimed at undermining the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and combating the military capabilities of the Taliban regime." Bush said that the Taliban, who ruled most of Afghanistan at the time, rejected his offer to hand over. The requirements of al-Qaeda leaders.
Recently, the "New York Times" published an article entitled "Long and Cruel 20 Years: A Detailed Explanation of the Afghan War", which described the ins and outs of the Afghan War in detail.
The article stated that by the end of 2001, the U.S. military quickly overthrew the Taliban government and crushed its armed forces.
In May 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan.
According to the New York Times, despite the continuous influx of American and NATO troops, the Taliban have rebuilt their combat capabilities, regained their previously controlled territories, and promised to build new schools, government centers, roads and bridges in an attempt to win the Afghans. support.
As the military threat posed by the Taliban continues to increase, as part of the "strengthening plan", former US President Barack Obama has sent tens of thousands of additional soldiers to Afghanistan, reaching nearly 100,000 by mid-2010.
However, despite US combat power and air strikes, the Taliban have become stronger and stronger, causing heavy casualties to the Afghan security forces.
In May 2011, the US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
In June of that year, Obama announced that he would start sending American troops back home and handing over security responsibilities to the Afghans by 2014.
On December 31, 2014, the US military ended its main combat operations, leaving 14,000 US troops stationed, but transitioned to training and assisting the Afghan security forces.
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban, promising that all U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.
On April 14 this year, US President Biden announced that all US troops will be withdrawn from the country before September 11.
At this point, the war in Afghanistan that has gone through four US presidents is finally coming to an end.
On March 20, 2003, the United States bypassed the UN Security Council on the grounds that Iraq had hidden weapons of mass destruction and secretly supported terrorists, and unilaterally carried out military strikes on Iraq until it withdrew in December 2011.
It is ridiculous that on February 5, 2003, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the situation in Iraq.
The then US Secretary of State Powell took out a test tube containing white powder at the meeting, claiming that it was evidence that Iraq was developing chemical weapons, and started the war on this basis.
In fact, the United States has so far failed to confirm the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In 2014, the "Islamic State" seized large areas of western and northern Iraq, and the US army subsequently increased its troops in Iraq, but its authority was limited to combating the "Islamic State" and providing support and training for the Iraqi government forces.
Currently, there are about 2,500 US troops stationed in Iraq.
In January 2020, the US military launched an air strike on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing Soleimani, the commander of the "Quds Brigade" under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran, and Muhandis, the deputy commander of the "People's Mobilization Organization" of the Iraqi Shiite militia. Et al.
The British BBC reported that the Bush administration formulated a document for the control of Iraq’s oil program before September 11th.
Sims, the former policy director of the British think tank New Economy Foundation, said that in the past century, when the United States and Britain sought to control more than their share of oil reserves, they had left behind conflicts, social unrest and environmental destruction around the world.
In April 2021, when US Vice President Harris participated in employment and infrastructure policy activities, he personally admitted that "the wars over the years and generations were fought for oil."
"Both wars were launched in the name of'anti-terrorism'. The '9.11' incident shocked the United States. At that time, the United States' treasury was full, comprehensive national strength reached its peak, and unilateralism prevailed. In order to demonstrate the prestige of the world's only superpower In response to the domestic public’s anxiety about security, the United States urgently needs to take retaliatory action." Li Weijian, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and vice president of the Chinese Middle East Society, told this newspaper that, in fact, long before the "9.11" incident, The United States has accelerated its control of the major oil-producing countries in the Middle East.
After the "September 11" incident, the United States began to analyze the reasons for the huge terrorist power in the Middle East. One of the important conclusions is that the ultra-conservative authoritarian government in the Middle East has contributed to the growth of terrorism.
The think tank of the US government has proposed that it hopes to allow some Middle Eastern countries to transition to democracies through regime change.
The United States took the opportunity to use Afghanistan and Iraq as experimental grounds to explore a model for establishing democratic regimes in the Middle East, and then promote it to other countries after success.
"Since the beginning of the new century, the United States has launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The common motive is to fight against Islamic anti-Americanism on the grounds of'anti-terrorism.' These two wars marked the shift in the focus of US global strategy from Europe and the Asia-Pacific to the greater Middle East. It has shifted from dealing with the challenge of major powers to dealing with the challenge of Islamic anti-Americanism.” Sun Degang, a researcher at the Center for Middle East Studies of Fudan University, said in an interview with our reporter that the difference between the two wars lies in: in Afghanistan, the focus of the US strike It is a non-state terrorist organization represented by Al Qaeda, destroying its "global terrorist network" from the Middle East to Central Asia; in Iraq, the United States is fighting the so-called "state terrorism" with "weapons of mass destruction" and dismantling the so-called "Axis of Evil".
Harm: bring disaster
Over the years, the war has brought serious humanitarian disasters to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to the "War Cost Accounting" project of Brown University in the United States, from 2001 to mid-April 2020, at least 47,245 Afghan civilians were killed in this war.
The Afghan government has been concealing the death toll of its own soldiers so as not to undermine the morale of the army.
However, the "War Cost Accounting" project estimates that the war caused the deaths of 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers.
According to data released by the United Nations, the war in Afghanistan forced 2.7 million Afghans to flee overseas and caused 4 million Afghans to be internally displaced. The total population of Afghanistan is only 36 million.
The Iraq War killed more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians and about 2.5 million became refugees.
In addition to death, the war also brought severe poverty to Afghanistan and Iraq.
As one of the least developed countries in the world, Afghanistan’s industrial and agricultural foundations are weak, food cannot be self-sufficient, its economy is heavily dependent on foreign aid, its finances cannot be self-reliant, and its people live in hardship.
In the 2019-2020 fiscal year, Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is approximately US$18.89 billion, and its per capita GDP is only US$586.6.
Although the fiscal revenue of the Afghan government has increased year by year, it has been unable to make ends meet for many years. 60% of the fiscal budget comes from international aid.
The unemployment rate has climbed for many years in a row, reaching 40% in 2019.
Some laborers can only earn about US$60 a month, making it difficult to maintain the livelihood of the whole family.
A research data released by The Lancet shows that at least 650,000 Iraqis have died in the war, and thousands of Iraqis have been forced to become refugees and refugees.
Statistics from relevant UN agencies show that Iraq’s current total population is 38.43 million, about 25% live below the global poverty line, and the unemployment rate is as high as 15%.
"The Afghanistan War and the Iraq War broke the original strategic balance between these two countries. After the war, the United States tried to make these two countries a democratic model for Islamic countries and developing countries. As a result, driven by electoral politics, Afghanistan, The domestic ethnic conflicts between the two countries in Iraq have risen to political factional struggles, tearing apart the society, undermining national identity, leaving these two countries in long-term turbulence, and providing soil for the growth of terrorism.” Sun Degang analyzed that the United States has not only paid for it. Huge personnel and financial losses, and the US military actions have caused a serious humanitarian crisis. Millions of civilians have been displaced, which has become a transnational security issue in the Greater Middle East.
"The impact of war on the development of a country is devastating." In the 1980s, before the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq (Iran, Iraq) war, Li Weijian, who had lived in Iraq for two years, was deeply moved: "Before the Iran-Iraq war began. For half a year, as a major oil country in the Middle East, Iraq was a very well-developed country. At that time, there were highways and basically every family had small villas and cars. Later, when the Iran-Iraq War broke out, Iraq and Iran repeatedly saw the situation in Iraq. The situation is getting worse: material supplies are tight, the social environment is rapidly deteriorating, and the economic foundation is severely damaged. Since then, after experiencing two heavy losses from the Gulf War and the Iraq War, Iraq has regressed back to an earlier era, and it will take a long time for it to recover. "
"The Iraq War has caused turbulence and chaos in the situation in and around Iraq." Li Weijian analyzed. First, Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurdish militants fought fiercely and pushed Iraq into an increasingly divided situation. It is becoming more and more difficult to achieve national reunification; the second is that the war has severely damaged national construction and deteriorated the environment for economic and social development; and the third is that the war has spawned terrorist forces.
These problems also exist in Afghanistan.
"The Afghanistan War and the Iraq War not only caused severe disasters to the local civilians, but also caused the two countries to fall apart and become a piece of scattered sand, creating conditions for external powers to train agents and intervene in the internal affairs of these countries." Sun Degang believes that practice has proved. , The use of force to fight terrorism and military means to change the regime of Islamic countries in the Middle East is a huge risk.
Cost: Empty national power
The war in Afghanistan and Iraq also cost the United States a heavy price.
According to the Associated Press, the 20-year-old Afghanistan war launched by the United States is the longest war in the United States.
This war has caused tens of thousands of deaths and overwhelmed the four U.S. presidents. In the end, it proved to be unwinnable, and the loss of personnel and property caused by the war was also staggering.
According to data released by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Afghan War has killed 2,442 U.S. soldiers and injured 20,666 U.S. soldiers since 2001.
According to the "War Cost Accounting" project, the U.S. expenditure on the war in Afghanistan is dizzying, totaling a staggering US$2.26 trillion.
Unlike other wars launched by the United States in the past, the United States has been heavily indebted because of the war in Afghanistan. It paid about 530 billion US dollars in interest and paid 296 billion US dollars in medical and other nursing funds to veterans.
For many years to come, the United States will continue to pay for these two expenditures.
The New York Times asked the U.S. government after a calculation: "We spent 2 trillion US dollars in Afghanistan. What benefits do we have?"
Statistics show that the Iraq War caused the deaths of 4,491 American soldiers and the disability of around 47,541 soldiers; the war expenditure was US$763 billion and the reconstruction cost was US$50 billion.
On December 18, 2011, the Iraq War, which lasted for more than eight years, ended with the withdrawal of US troops.
Today, even though the Iraq War has ended for 10 years, the country is still in turmoil, and gunfire has not stopped for a day.
The U.S. military evacuated Afghanistan hastily, leaving behind a mess of rampant violence and devastation.
A classified intelligence assessment obtained by the US "New York Times" shows that within two to three years after the withdrawal of international forces, Afghanistan may fall under the control of the Taliban to a large extent.
In fact, within just two months of the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban’s total control area has doubled, surpassing the Afghan government.
"In the past few years, the United States has been trapped in the quagmire of the Middle East battlefield. It has successively invested trillions of dollars and lost a lot of national power, causing itself to start to decline." Li Weijian said that on the one hand, the United States has fallen into the Middle East battlefield too deeply, even if it invested so much. They did not get the results they wanted, nor did they realize their desire to transform Afghanistan and Iraq into democracies in accordance with their own democratic model.
On the other hand, as the world’s only superpower, after World War II, the United States tried to establish the prestige of a great power by providing security protection to some countries and providing public goods to the world. However, in recent years, the United States has not only failed to “protect” countries and regions. To come to security and stability, on the contrary, it caused great division, turbulence and chaos, leading to a sharp decline in its international image.
The debt crisis aggravated by the war in the United States has continued to the present.
On July 31, local time, the two-year suspension of the US federal government’s debt ceiling expired. On August 1, the US debt ceiling was restored to take effect, again facing a debt ceiling crisis.
The new debt ceiling is US$22 trillion plus the new debt balance since August 2019, which is expected to reach US$28.5 trillion (approximately RMB 184.16 trillion).
Earlier, the Budget Office of the American Congress has warned that if measures are not taken to resolve the ceiling crisis at this time, the United States is likely to face the risk of sovereign debt default in October or November this year.
Struggle: incompetent
"In the past 20 years, the United States has left a mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is both an irresponsible act and a helpless act. The United States is deeply mired in war and has to "stop the bleeding" by withdrawing troops and refocus the global strategy. Turn to Indo-Pacific and Europe, and put the geopolitical game between major powers in the first place in foreign strategy.” Sun Degang believes that the US Congress recently abolished the Iraq War "Authorized Warfare Act" passed in 2002 and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The result of political and public reflections on the 20-year war on terrorism.
The United States tried to use violence to curb violence and combat terrorism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East, which ultimately proved that there were serious problems.
"There is no winner in this war so far, and there will not be any in the future." On August 2, 2011, the US "Time" once commented after Obama announced the end of the Iraq War.
"In recent years, the United States has been eager to withdraw its troops from the Middle East, withdrawing resources and investment from the Middle East, with the goal of shifting its strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific region as soon as possible to start a great power game." Iraq can "kill two birds with one stone." First, it can control the oil of Middle Eastern countries, and second, it can form a deterrent against China and Russia.
But now the United States is becoming more and more powerless.
"Ending a war is more difficult than starting a war." Obama once lamented.
What enlightenment did the war in Afghanistan and Iraq bring to the world?
In the future, how will the United States maintain its influence in the Middle East?
"As a global power, it is not easy for the United States to withdraw from the Middle East. It is not only due to inertia, but also related to its intertwined interests in the Middle East, such as oil and munitions." Li Weijian believes that although the United States adopts a strategic contraction policy, it is still replaced by others. Way to maintain its presence in the Middle East.
Establishing military bases in Central Asian countries close to Afghanistan and leaving some military advisers in Iraq will pave the way for the United States to return to the Middle East in the future.
In addition, the United States will continue to sell weapons to countries in the Middle East.
"After the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and Iraq, it will'leave a tail', including retaining military trainers in these two countries, strengthening military bases in surrounding areas (such as Gulf countries), and deploying long-range bombers and drones to perform special tasks. , Continue to intervene in the affairs of these two countries from abroad.” Sun Degang said that the United States has “stayed” in many countries in the Middle East, trying to maintain its global hegemony by controlling strategic resources such as oil in the Middle East.
"The Afghan War and the Iraq War are both initiated by the United States. Small countries do not want to fight, but sometimes they are forced to get involved in a state of war." Li Weijian said that taking the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War as examples, the war is either for the country that initiated the war or is forced to A country caught in war is not a good thing.
When encountering disputes and contradictions, the international community should stop those who want to use force at every turn, and resolve disputes more through dialogue and diplomacy.
"The U.S. war on terrorism is often in the name of anti-terrorism, pursuing geopolitical goals, and even excluding regional countries and non-Western powers from the international anti-terrorist alliance." Sun Degang pointed out that the global counter-terrorism must be mobilized under the framework of the United Nations. Enthusiasm, forming an inclusive security cooperation mechanism.
The member states of the United Nations can only gradually eliminate the soil that breeds extremism and terrorism if they work together to promote national reconciliation and economic reconstruction.
Jia Pingfan