A Really, Really Expensive Way Not To Win A War
Posted by Jacques Chester on Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Via the Raving Wingnut comes this New Statesman story on the potential long term costs of the War in Iraq – the conservative ‘likely case’ estimate is US$2.5 trillion.
It’s a terribly expensive way to do things. Here are some observations:
Bombing vs Bribing
Going by the current cost figure of US$400 billion, I figure that Iraqi goodwill towards the USA could have been bought out at about US$15,000 per head. I’m sure Saddam would have been happy to expel any evil-doers and play nice for a few measly billions wired to selected numbered accounts in Zurich, bringing down to total bill even more.
As much as I hate to say it, and as much as it only encourages bad behaviour (cf North Korea), bribery has its virtues. For one, it’s much cheaper than invasion and occupation, in these days where invasions can’t be paid for by sacking cities and selling the vanquished into slavery (which made Rome’s wars generally quite profitable, for instance).
If we go further and include the $2.5 terabuck figure, the cost of the war rises to an astonishing US$95,000 per liberated Iraqi or less terrifying US$8000 per freedom fries yank. Again we could probably have bought off Saddam with a tiny fraction of this amount – say US$1 billion per year, instead of paying US$1 billion per week.
Think also in terms of ratios of lives and injury. The whole bandwagon got moving on the basis of the September 11 attacks, in which 3021 people died. So far 3190 US soldiers are confirmed dead. The ratios worsen even more if you consider wounded – estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000 US soldiers wounded (for a discussion, see the linked article). Lastly there are the estimates of Iraqi deaths directly and indirectly caused by the war, ranging from tens of thousands to a million.
I will be accused of missing this or that term in my equation, but that misses the point. I hate this sort of cold moral account keeping, but it brings home the fact that the war has been a stupid waste of time. This back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that fighting the terrorists via occupation has cost far more death and suffering than the terrorists were themselves able to cause. If we pretended utilitarians could measure such things, it might well have turned out that staying at home and letting the terrorists demolish buildings now and then would be far better for saving lives than expeditions to far flung countries.
Positive Side Effects
One way to bring down the long term cost of Iraq is to improve the quality and quantity of total or near-total recoveries from war injuries. The linked article suggests that in Afghanistan some 16 or so soldiers are injured for every soldier killed. This is about 10 times the ratio of World War I. It’s marvellous for the soldiers but very expensive for the home country.
The Pentagon is already spending a lot of money on medical research, which in the long run is their best bet for bringing down those nightmarish support costs. Expect to see a surge of research into traumatic injury treatment, PTSD and limb replacement.
Things Left Undone
Of course a tiny fraction of this gargantuan venture’s budget could have been spent in improving what failed in the first place: the gathering, dissemination, integration and analysis of intelligence on terrorist activity. The war on terror is supposed to be about preventing terrorists from carrying out acts of terrorism. As a grand strategy, invasion and occupation is preposterously expensive when weighed against the advantages it grants.
Again, suppose that US$400 billion were to be spent on preventing terrorist activity. For almost any conceivable alternative, and even factoring in Washingtonian gold plating, log rolling and horse trading, the outcome per dollar would have to be far superior.
How Did We Get Stuck There In The First Place?
We were all irrational. I certainly was.
We never set criteria for success or failure. We might want to base policy on lowering total deaths globally caused by terrorist activity. Since terrorism is a global problem, a global metric might be useful. We could track the fall of terrorist activity as a single-number metric, weighing policies both in dollars and expected lives saved. I imagine some clever insurance types could work the numbers.
But why bother? In truth, the likelihood of actually dying or being injured in a terrorist act is pretty small. I know its a clich© to point this out, but in the USA, more people die in car accidents per month than died in the September 11 attacks. But until I see a war on road accidents costing US$400 billion, 3200 lives, 50,000 wounded and the total destruction of the USA’s prestige and future budgetary health, I guess I’ll have to stick to bitching about a stupid, expensive war which never delivered on any objective measure.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 6:09 AM and filed under Libertarian Musings, Politics - international.
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Yes, we can really use more people bitching. Especially people who have all the answers but who have never lifted a finger to actually help.
Everytime you insist that the US has lost its prestige, you are spreading the “US has lost its prestige” meme. Congratulations, genius.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 7:18 am | PermalinkAre you familiar with the concept of division of labour?
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 7:20 am | PermalinkAhhh, Kevin, the old “blame it on the lefties” meme. You’re gonna need a spatula the size of a galaxy to spread that one, buddy.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 9:24 am | PermalinkThe long-term consequences (gains or losses) of the Iraq adventure are very hard to quantify. The main consequence seems to be that Iran has seen a hostile neighbour transform into a close ally: the shi-ites have finally achieved power in Iraq on the basis of their greater numbers. The US may not have started the war with a wish to strengthen Iran, but that’s certainly the main long-run consequence. Is this good or bad and is that worth all the expense? I tend to veer to the notion that it might be beter to have a country ruled by the majority than by a tiny minority but that’s because I’m in favour of democracy.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 9:32 am | PermalinkAs to the expense itself: a lot of it one should see as an internal US workfare scheme, i.e. keeping the boys and girls in the factories and barracks busy. Old-style Keynesianism at work. Whether that is a good way to spend the tax dollars depends on whether you think there was something more useful for these people to do. Some people think the US is already rich enough without even more productive assets geared towards growth …
Not all of us.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 12:30 pm | PermalinkQuite right Bill.
I was not irrational.
Great post Jacques, dismal but very rational. Tragically, most injured Afghanis and Iraqis will never receive or know of such things as traumatic injury treatment, or pretty much any treatment, its a grim lifetime of pain many, many thousands of men now face. Mmph.
I agree with the idea of spreading out the $4 trillion over the population as a better use of funds, an inspired thought, but why call it ‘bribing’ when we could just be greeks bearing gifts? I am sure something other than killing and maiming each other could have been agreed upon. Like starvation, tyranny and fear, greed is a world-wide phenomenon–as is irrationality.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 4:16 pm | PermalinkEr . . not quite $4trillion.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 4:24 pm | PermalinkThe Chester sequel: ‘The Poles, 1939 – Were They Worth The Grief’?
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 5:29 pm | PermalinkGodwin’s Law. You lose. Go to gaol, do not pass go, do not acknowledge that Saddam was effectively contained and disarmed where Hitler wasn’t. Why do righties favour the Hitler analogy while denying the legitimacy of the Vietnam analogy whereas lefties do the opposite? Why is blogosphere debate so often predictable and repetitive? At least Jacques has come up with an interesting if basic utilitarian analysis from the viewpoint of an avowed Liberal who supported the Iraq War.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 5:40 pm | PermalinkKen Parish wrote:
That’s an easy one. It was the last war that offered any real “moral clarity” and there is a particular nostalgia for that good vs. evil struggle. Vietnam was trickier and much harder to analyse in those terms.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 5:57 pm | PermalinkAlot of people keep asking the question of what should have been done about Saddam if it was decided not to invade in 2003. There is the obvious point that he already was contained but those that say he was breaking down that containment have a point.
My own solution would have been halfway in between. What I like to think of as a creeping loss of soveriegnty. By the time the war started Saddam could not operate in the Kurdish north, and had only limited access to the Shiite south. Effectively he was President of no more than the Sunni fraction of Iraq, which was land locked to boot.
Why not continue with that policy in a more active manner? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to work with the Shiites in southern Iraq to actively expel Saddam’s forces, especially his Republican guard? And help the Kurds set up their own state with funds, training etc and big big bribes to the Turks along with carefully negotiated agreements between the Turks and the Kurds to make that happen? Then once independent and relatively prosperous areas are established on the door step of the Sunni area bribe the Shiites into accepting Sunni refugess from “Saddamistan”. Offer to help them turn Basra into the next Dubai. Finally with Sunni’s leaving for the more prosperous south you could start walking the border of Saddamistan back up towards Baghdad. Enforce no fly zones 50, then 100 miles into Saddam’s area. Cross the border in force to demonstrate Saddam’s inability to defend it. Make the border a dangerous area for pro Saddam forces by repeatedly taking them out from the air. Then as Saddam’s forces retreat closer to Baghda help the Shiites actively take control of the land.
All this could have been done at a very small fraction of the price of the current mess. Of course it would have upset the Arab oil states to give Shiites that much power, but they’re not exactly happy about the situation that’s there today either.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 7:04 pm | PermalinkI like the analysis of ‘still working it out’ and it indeed seems the alternative that could well have been put into place, though it seems to me the end result would have been the same as the likely end result now: victory for the Shiites and their eventual takeover of most of the country.
Posted on 14-Mar-07 at 12:05 pm | PermalinkThe people sho say that the war was good because it got rid of Saddam are not consistent though: if that was a sufficiently good reason, then surely they should now be clamouring for an invasion of Sudan on the basis of an almost certain genocide in progress there? I hear no such clamour.
Are you sure this what you meant, Ken?
The disagreement only applies to WWII, and the righties are wrongy for the reasons you give.
By contrast there is agreement over the Vietnam analogy; only the conclusions are different. Righties commend the interventions in both Vietnam and Iraq, and believe that appeasers sabotaged both campaigns; lefties think that both interventions were folly.
The exceptions are the ‘leftist hawkes’ who originally supported the Iraq invasion because they were confident that it was different from Vietnam. With a few exceptions (such as Hitchens), most realise in hindsight that they were wrong.
Posted on 14-Mar-07 at 1:56 pm | Permalink