The United States has spent trillions of dollars to fight terrorism, but has not achieved results.

US troops in Syria. Photo: AFP

The author of the document, Daniel Depetris, a researcher at Defense Priorities, noted that after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States increased the cost of conducting operations abroad, buying weapons to help foreign allies. But during this time, the terrorist threat only increased.

Military expert Ivan Konovalov says the inefficiency of US spending on counterterrorism is not surprising.

“How can these costs be effective if the US spends money on fighting terrorism with one hand, and with the other creates new armed groups that serve their own purposes, and then become terrorists? We saw this in the example of the notorious IS organization. The Americans know that such a group was created and eventually turned into a global evil force, and the whole world must fight against it,” Konovalov said.

And even the money that Americans, they say, spend on the war on terror often strengthens the terrorists, he said.

“There is a case like this, in the war in Syria, the Americans spent about half a billion dollars on training the so-called “moderate opposition” fighters – and almost all of these rebels later switched to the side of the jihadists. This is an example of what happens when politicizing the goal of fighting terrorists; in this case, against the legitimate leadership of the Syrian Government. And the main expenses of the United States are for such purposes,” Ivan Konovalov concluded.