Cost of warCost to U.S. of Iraq, Afghanistan wars to exceed $4 trillion

Published 29 March 2013

A new study from Harvard University, calculating the cost to the United States of the wars in Iraq Afghanistan, has concluded that that cost will come to between $4 trillion to $6 trillion. This cost includes the spending on medical care for wounded soldiers and repairs to and replacement of military gear used in the two wars. The decision by the Bush administration to pay for the wars with borrowed money has increased their costs, the study says. In all, the two wars have added $2 trillion to the U.S. debt, accounting for about 20 percent of the debt incurred from 2001 to 2012.

U.S. troops in transit // Source: nangluongvietnam.vn

A new study, calculating the cost to the United States of the wars in Iraq Afghanistan, has concluded that that cost will come to between $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

This cost includes the spending on medical care for wounded soldiers and repairs to and replacement of military gear used in the two wars. The U.S. military involvement in Iraq ended last year, and the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is drawing to an end, but the study author, Linda J. Bilmes, notes that an increase in military benefits which the Bush administration initiated in 2001, and the continuing costs of nation building in both countries, mean the expenditures related to the wars will go on for a long time to come.

“As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives,” the report says. “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

The Washington Post quotes Bilmes to say the United States has spent nearly $2 trillion already for the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those costs, she said, are only a fraction of the total ultimate cost.

The report notes that “Historically, the bill for these costs [medical care and disability benefits to veterans] has come due many decades later.”

The decision by the Bush administration to pay for the wars with borrowed money has increased their costs, the study says. In all, the two wars have added $2 trillion to the U.S. debt, accounting for about 20 percent of the debt incurred from 2001 to 2012.

The Post notes that Bilmes’s estimate of the cost of the two wars offers a higher range than that offered by another authoritative study on the subject by Brown University’s Eisenhower Research Project. The Brown university study calculates the cost of the two wars to be about $4 trillion.

The Post highlights the fact that both the Brown and Harvard sets of figures are substantially higher than what the Bush administration, in the planning phase, had projected the cost of the wars to be.

— Read more in Linda J. Bilmes, The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets (Harard Kennedy School, 2013)