Forever Wars

"Forever wars" is a critical shorthand used by journalists, scholars, and politicians to describe the open-ended military engagements the United States and allied forces sustained after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The term captures three overlapping features: indefinite duration, ambiguous victory conditions, and reliance on a single expansive legal authorization rather than a fresh declaration of war.

The legal backbone in the US case is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, which empowered the president to act against those responsible for 9/11 and "associated forces." Successive administrations — Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden — invoked it to justify operations far beyond Afghanistan, including strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, and against the Islamic State. A separate 2002 AUMF covered Iraq.

Key episodes typically grouped under the label include:

• The war in Afghanistan (October 2001 – August 2021), ending with the US withdrawal and Taliban return to power.
• The Iraq War (2003–2011) and the later anti-ISIS campaign from 2014.
• Drone and special-operations campaigns across the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Arabian Peninsula.

Critics — including analysts at the Costs of War Project at Brown University — argue these conflicts produced high civilian casualties, large displacement, and trillions in cumulative US spending while failing to deliver durable political settlements. Defenders contend sustained presence degraded transnational jihadist networks and prevented mass-casualty attacks on the US homeland.

The phrase gained mainstream traction in the 2010s and was used by President Joe Biden in his April 14, 2021 speech announcing the Afghanistan withdrawal, where he pledged to end "America's longest war." Debate continues in Congress over repealing or replacing the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs to constrain future open-ended deployments.