The United States Should Disengage from The War in Afghanistan
It has been 17 years of the 9/11 attack, but the war in Afghanistan still goes on. It is time that America should disengage its armies in Afghanistan. This never-ending war has been causing America the consumption of huge amounts of resources along with distributing its strategic focus from far important issues including climate change and the rise of China.
There seems no end to this war, but America chooses to continue to fight in Afghanistan. For almost two decades, young American men and women are trained and sent to the Afghan State where most of them die during the war. But the United States continues to do so as Afghanistan was the place where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This country is nowhere near to achieving a state of stability and America does not want to risk that. They cannot just simply let the Afghan state become a safe place for terrorists again. America is not ready to withdraw as they cannot risk another such attack happening in the soil of the United States (Fuchs, 2018).
But sending their soldiers and sacrificing them for a fight that has no end in sight and that also only because of certain fears and risk is not sensible at all. America has been neglecting national security concerns for a long time that are far more important than preventing these political threats (Fuchs, 2018). There are many reasons to disengage from Afghanistan war such as.
Firstly, the United States really needs to take the consequences of climate change into consideration as soon as possible. The U.S. National Security Strategy seems to be ignoring this issue completely while the appointment of an administrator for the Environmental Protection agency who does not even believe in human-made global warming reflects how lightly this issue is being taken. The government does not realize the sensitivity of this issue. The only time to fix this crucial problem is now, and if it is not properly utilized, it will lead to a highly insecure future for every single living being. Rising temperatures will lead to strong droughts, water shortage, and resource struggles. These extreme weathers and rising sea levels possess a risk of flooding and violence that will not be possible to get control over (Stavridis, 2018).
Secondly, the economic growth of China is quite revolutionary and if continues to grow like that; China will soon become a superpower that will be a threat to America’s status as well as the global structure. China’s cultural and ideological factors are much different from the United States and its alliance with the Islamic states makes it quite a threat to the west. The nationalism that drives China is the second factor that has long been an issue between the two countries. The US-China relationships are one thing that America should really consider improving right now for a peaceful future (Xia, 2017).
Thirdly, the election of Donald Trump in the United States has been an indication of a democracy’s crisis. Many countries like Turkey, Russia, Hungary, and Poland seem to have elected strongmen that might turn democratic systems into electoral dictatorships. Other countries with supposedly stable democracies like Netherland, Germany, and Sweden now seem to follow them as well. These authoritarian rulers and rise of populism are quite a threat to liberal democracy. It is another issue that demands immediate attention as a liberal democracy must be saved for the greater good (Mounk, 2018).
These are few of the many security threats that the United States possesses right now. Instead of fighting a war based on the fear of the unknown and inertia, America should focus on making a strategy to cope up with issues of much greater importance and utilize its resources on them. It is time that America gets out of Afghanistan.
References:
Fuchs, M. H. (2018, August 19). It’s time to end America’s war in Afghanistan. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree
/2018/aug/19/Americas
Mounk, Y. (2018, March 4). How populist uprisings could bring down liberal democracy. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree
/2018/mar/04/shock-system-liberal-democracy-populism
Stavridis, J. (2018, January 11). America’s Most Pressing Threat? Climate Change. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles
/2018-01-11/america-s-no-1-enemy-climate-change
Xia, M. (2017, September). “China Threat” or a “Peaceful Rise of China”? https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com
/ref/college/coll-china-politics-007.html?mcubz=2
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