Friday Questions: What Have We Learned from the End of the 20-Year War in Afghanistan?
By Harley Schlanger
What does it mean to say that we have reached the "end of an era"? It's good we are no longer putting U.S. troops in harm's way in Afghanistan. But was this merely a way of shifting troops to beef up the military deployment to contain and confront Russia and China? Or is it possible to really end the era of geopolitical provocations, and live in a world committed to peace and economic cooperation? What the war hawks and proponents of empire fear is that the American people will rally behind a rejection of the policies of the last thirty years, of a "unipolar" world controlled by U.S. military power deployed under City of London and Wall Street direction, and instead restore the American system of physical economy at home, and collaborate with other nations for mutual benefit.