The Atlantic

Trump Inherits the ‘Good War’

What will the president-elect do with Afghanistan?
An Afghan man watches the broadcast of the 2016 U.S. presidential-election results on TV in Kabul, Afghanistan, on November 9, 2016.
Source: Omar Sobhani / Reuters

The question of what President-elect Donald Trump has planned for Afghanistan rarely came up during his run for the presidency. As is the sometimes-custom of Trump, apart from several tweets (“Let’s get out of Afghanistan?”) and inflammatory comments (“Karzai is a crook”), it’s unclear what he wants to do in the country, despite the fact that it is the site of the longest war in U.S. history.

Since 2002, the international community has some $100 billion on rebuilding the country and its economy. Nearly of Afghanistan’s annual income is from international donors. Washington itself “is by far the largest spender on the Afghan armed forces and government. Without U.S. financial support, it is difficult to imagine the state, in its current form, surviving,” said Thomas Ruttig, a co-founder of

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