The 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil triggered two major wars in response —in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. They were part of a larger War on Terror, but the human cost has been enormous, and the suffering cannot be measured.
At its peak, more than 300,000 soldiers from over 40 countries were deployed in both wars. Casualty figures vary enormously, but an estimate made by The Guardian on Aug. 22 puts the death toll from the two wars and the many terrorist attacks linked to them, at around 250,000 people, including 150,000 civilians. Add to this a conservative three-to-one ratio for injured, and the total number of casualties reaches a million.
But war of course has economic consequences as well, and measuring those costs is no simple matter. Particularly in today’s climate, where austerity measures are the new norm, and debates rage over stretched military budgets, the cost of 10 years of war is being closely examined.
Waging war is massively expensive. But some argue the benefits of the “war economy,” meaning that war production can be good for a country’s economy, as long as the war is not on its own soil. The World War II boon for the United States is considered a classic example.
This kind of thinking is deceptive, however, says Anita Dancs, assistant professor of Economics at Western New England University, and one of the scholars participating in the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
“This is a bit of a ‘broken window policy’,” she told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview. “If you break a window, that creates economic output because you have to pay for the window, and for someone to install it. But it doesn’t have any other positive gain.”
The Costs of War project has created a comprehensive website, detailing the direct and indirect economic costs of the wars for the United States. They have found that the wars have cost the United States alone between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion.
Dancs said that research shows that spending on the military creates fewer jobs and less positive long-term impact. She mentioned several things that would have been more beneficial to the country as a whole, such as investing in renewable energy or infrastructure.
“If you invest in something like infrastructure, that just has a much longer-term impact than building a bomb that just blows up and destroys the natural and man-made environment somewhere else,” she said.
The war effort can also have other negative economic effects on a country that may be less obvious. The impact of Hurricane Katrina for example, might have been far less serious if the Bush administration had put a priority on prevention and flood projects. The relief effort also suffered from the fact that so many of the National Guard were in Iraq at the time, says Dancs.
Of course, for the country where the war is actually waged, the consequences are most serious. Bassam Yousif, Iraq-born professor of economics at Indiana University, has focused his research on his home country. He says although Iraq’s GDP and growth has been “not spectacular, but OK” in recent years, this is not a reliable measure.
“Most of the growth comes from oil. But can you translate that into better livelihood and stronger institutions? That’s the challenge, and the real measure,” he said.
Yousif pointed out that through the war, Iraq has lost a good portion of its productive capability and many of its most skilled and capable citizens have emigrated. This, together with the continued unrest and violence, makes it very difficult to turn the oil revenue into a better life for the Iraqis.
He is also critical of the attempts by the United States and the international community to impose what he describes as free market, unbridled capitalism on Iraq. Iraqis have a different view from the United States about what a just economy or a good political economy looks like, says Yousif, including a long tradition of programs that emphasize social justice.
“I think we will look back on this period as a rather difficult transition; one that was probably made more difficult than it had to be,” he said.
Waging war is massively expensive. But some argue the benefits of the “war economy,” meaning that war production can be good for a country’s economy, as long as the war is not on its own soil. The World War II boon for the United States is considered a classic example.
This kind of thinking is deceptive, however, says Anita Dancs, assistant professor of Economics at Western New England University, and one of the scholars participating in the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
“This is a bit of a ‘broken window policy’,” she told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview. “If you break a window, that creates economic output because you have to pay for the window, and for someone to install it. But it doesn’t have any other positive gain.”
The Costs of War project has created a comprehensive website, detailing the direct and indirect economic costs of the wars for the United States. They have found that the wars have cost the United States alone between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion.
Dancs said that research shows that spending on the military creates fewer jobs and less positive long-term impact. She mentioned several things that would have been more beneficial to the country as a whole, such as investing in renewable energy or infrastructure.
“If you invest in something like infrastructure, that just has a much longer-term impact than building a bomb that just blows up and destroys the natural and man-made environment somewhere else,” she said.
The war effort can also have other negative economic effects on a country that may be less obvious. The impact of Hurricane Katrina for example, might have been far less serious if the Bush administration had put a priority on prevention and flood projects. The relief effort also suffered from the fact that so many of the National Guard were in Iraq at the time, says Dancs.
Of course, for the country where the war is actually waged, the consequences are most serious. Bassam Yousif, Iraq-born professor of economics at Indiana University, has focused his research on his home country. He says although Iraq’s GDP and growth has been “not spectacular, but OK” in recent years, this is not a reliable measure.
“Most of the growth comes from oil. But can you translate that into better livelihood and stronger institutions? That’s the challenge, and the real measure,” he said.
Yousif pointed out that through the war, Iraq has lost a good portion of its productive capability and many of its most skilled and capable citizens have emigrated. This, together with the continued unrest and violence, makes it very difficult to turn the oil revenue into a better life for the Iraqis.
He is also critical of the attempts by the United States and the international community to impose what he describes as free market, unbridled capitalism on Iraq. Iraqis have a different view from the United States about what a just economy or a good political economy looks like, says Yousif, including a long tradition of programs that emphasize social justice.
“I think we will look back on this period as a rather difficult transition; one that was probably made more difficult than it had to be,” he said.
