The US spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan – and for what?

Since 2001, the United States has spent $2.26 trillion in Afghanistan, the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculates – an investment that has yielded a chaotic, humiliating end to America’s longest war.

There is no shortage of benchmarks to count the cost of the United States’ longest war. Blood is by far the most precious metric. Treasure feels insignificant by comparison. But as images of Afghans swarming Kabul airport, desperately trying to flee Taliban rule, flood screens around the world, the vast sums the US spent trying to build Afghanistan into a liberal democracy deserve a thorough audit. Otherwise, lessons may be forgotten and tragic mistakes repeated. The bedrock of any nation-building effort is security. If people don’t feel safe, instability, graft and corruption flourish while the formal economy withers. Back in 2001, Afghanistan’s economy lay in ruins due to more than two decades of war that predated the US-led invasion in October of that year.