The costs of war - a comprehensive overview

In the article below, Bob Adelmann compiles a more comprehensive itemized list of the costs of US military spending than most authors. He starts with Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion from their book by the same name, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008). He points out that the authors now think they underestimaed the costs of this war by one-third. In the meantime, the costs of the Afghanistan War has escalated, while the costs of the war in Iraq have fallen and while the overall military budget has continued to go up. Adelmann also identifies other indirect and not well known costs of war.

The widely cited books by Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power and Washington Rules, provide a historical and political-economic context in which to acquire an understanding of why the US population is so willing to live with such enormous costs of ongoing wars- and other military-related costs. Check them out.

Much of the effects and the contexts are simply not known by the great majority of people. However, in a stagnating, high-unemployment, low-wage, economy in which government services are being curtailed, this information may at some point have an impact. In the meantime, there is extensive support for keeping "the military strong," a view that is constantly being reinforced by the government's ideological justification of a "war on terror" and supported by the media in general and by right-wing sectors of the population.


Bob Adelmann, "The Real Costs of War,"
Friday, 01 October 2010 14:57
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/4765-the-real-costs-of-the-war

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Because the number of veterans needing post-combat medical care is about 30 percent higher than their original estimates [i.e., the estimates of Stilglitz and Bilmes], the long-term costs of the wars are likely to exceed $4 trillion.

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Admiral Mike Mullen agrees that these costs are “just not sustainable,” with Pentagon health spending tripling in just the past ten years.

When Publishers Weekly reviewed the book in 2008 [The Three Trillion Dollar War], it said that “Figuring in macro economic costs and interest — the [Iraq] war has been funded with much borrowed money — the cost rises to $4.5 trillion; add Afghanistan, and the bill tops $7 trillion.” And reviewers of the book at Amazon.com noted additional costs, including [some of which are addressed by Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book]:

loss of life and work potential for the private sector
cost of seriously impaired to society
mental health costs and consequences
quality of life impairment
family costs
social costs

Other impacts of the wars are higher oil prices, reduction in capital available for investment in the private economy, and increased pressure on the dollar.... Unfortunately, the authors and reviewers have left out the most damaging cost of all: that wars are used to maintain the oppression of the state against the people. This is the conclusion of a controversial study, The Report from Iron Mountain, published in 1967 by Dial Press and then re-published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster. Responses to challenges to the validity of the report authored by a Special Study Group of 15 highly-placed individuals were resolved when one of those involved in the study, Harvard Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, wrote “As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so would I testify to the validity of its conclusions.”

Some of the conclusions of that study include

war produces waste, which is a way to control surpluses
war produces jobs and industrial advancement
war stimulates the economy
war “is, and has been, the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies”
war is “virtually synonymous with nationhood”
military service has a “patriotic” priority in society
wars "have provided...[a] state-supported haven...for the 'unemployable'"
war can be used as a “…control device over the hostile, nihilistic, and potential unsettling elements of society…”

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[War] has insured the subordination of the citizens to the state [emphasis added] by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood.

In his expose of the Federal Reserve System, The Creature from Jekyll Island, author G. Edward Griffin studied the Iron Mountain report carefully and concluded that “war has been the only reliable means to achieve that goal [of stability]. It contends that only during times of war or the threat of war are the masses compliant enough to carry the yoke of government without complaint … No amount of sacrifice in the name of victory will be rejected. Resistance is viewed as treason. But, in times of peace, people become resentful of high taxes, shortages, and bureaucratic intervention. No government has long survived without enemies and armed conflict. War, therefore, has been an indispensable condition for “stabilizing society.”That is the true cost of wars.