Editor's note: Xing Yajie, a special commentator for CGTN, is a lecturer at the School of International Relations under the University of International Business and Economics in China. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In the five years since the United States completed its military withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, its nearly two-decade-long war in the Islamic country may have come to an end but it has hardly left war behind. American forces have continued military operations in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, expanding them with military strikes against Iran in 2026. On the fifth anniversary of Washington's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, one overwhelming question remains: Despite paying such an enormous cost in Afghanistan for such a long time, why does the American "forever war" continue?

It is true that during the past two decades, Afghanistan did register improvements in education, healthcare, and infrastructure. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan's economy grew by more than 7% per year on average over 2001-2020, with the GDP increasing by 180%. Youth literacy rose from 47% in 2011 to 67% in 2018. Women's rights also improved, as girls' access to education expanded rapidly, accompanied by higher attendance rates and narrowing gender disparities. The media sector likewise experienced notable growth.

These improvements were real, but they could hardly offset the devastating consequences of a protracted war. According to Brown University's Costs of War project, by mid-April 2021, the war had directly claimed approximately 176,000 lives in Afghanistan, including around 72,000 Afghan military and police personnel and over 46,000 civilians. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded. Years of sustained armed conflict also displaced large numbers of people and severely disrupted the economic and social life of Afghans.

Moreover, the US-led nation-building efforts failed to establish a stable foundation for Afghanistan's long-term development. In the security sector, reconstruction was subordinated to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, leading to the increasing militarization of assistance while doing little to improve the sense of security among ordinary Afghans.

In the political sphere, the United States promoted a highly centralized presidential system despite its uneasy fit with Afghanistan's political traditions, while aid programs that bypassed the central government contributed to the emergence of a "parallel government" and weakened state authority.

Economic reconstruction remained heavily dependent on foreign assistance, while agriculture and rural development received inadequate support, and the drug economy remained largely unresolved. The consequences of this failed nation-building project remain profound. Today, millions of Afghanistan families are facing growing hardships, lacking access to basic needs such as water, food, healthcare, housing, heating, and clothing. More than 80% of households are in debt, and nearly three quarters rely on negative coping strategies to manage getting through the day.

Ordinarily, the enormous costs of war prompt a state to reconsider the necessity of resorting to force. Yet the United States has followed a different trajectory. It withdrew from Afghanistan, but not from the Middle East. Continued military operations suggest Washington has largely shifted battlefields and adjusted the modalities of force rather than abandoning its longstanding reliance on military power to address security challenges.

Two structural factors help explain this persistence. The US policy remains deeply shaped by the interests of the military-industrial complex. As an interest coalition that benefits from interventionist foreign and military policies, the military-industrial complex depends on sustained conflict and a persistent climate of insecurity to preserve its economic and political interests. External threats are therefore repeatedly amplified and translated into arguments for higher defense spending, expanded arms procurement, and greater arms exports.

The war in Afghanistan epitomized this logic. It generated enormous military expenditures while further entrenching the linkage between defense-sector interests and American security policy. The end of the Afghanistan war did not dismantle this structure. Instead, new regional conflicts and security risks have continued to generate new military demands. Battlefields and perceived threats may change, but the interest mechanisms sustaining military expenditure remain firmly in place.

The United States military involvement is also driven by the pursuit of dominance over energy supplies in the Middle East. The region remains one of the world's most important centers of oil and natural gas production as well as a critical hub for global energy transportation. According to the US Energy Information Administration, in the first half of 2025, the average daily oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz was 20.9 million barrels, accounting for about 20% of global oil liquid consumption; in addition, 11.4 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas (LNG) passed through the Strait, accounting for about 20% of global LNG trade.

Although its domestic shale oil and gas revolution has reduced the United States dependence on Middle Eastern energy, it has not diminished the region's strategic importance. The United States has therefore maintained a substantial military presence in the Gulf and surrounding areas, partly to safeguard the stability of oil and gas supplies and critical transportation routes, but more importantly to preserve its ability to shape and influence the regional energy supply system through military superiority.

The interests of the United States military-industrial complex and Washington's pursuit of dominance over Middle Eastern energy supplies are mutually reinforcing. The former drives the continuous expansion of military capabilities; the latter provides the external arena in which those capabilities are repeatedly employed. Their interaction has produced a structural dependence on "forever war."

The Afghanistan war, despite its enormous costs, failed to break this structural dependence. What the United States appears to have learned is primarily how to avoid prolonged occupation and reduce the costs of warfare, rather than how to reduce its reliance on military force itself. Although the forms of American military involvement in the Middle East have changed, the domestic interests and external strategic imperatives underpinning military intervention remain intact. In this sense, the fundamental logic of the United States military behavior abroad has not fundamentally changed. "Forever war" has thus become a kind of binding "spell" that the United States finds itself structurally unable to escape.

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