Book Review

War’s gruesome calculus

The Three Trillion Dollar War: the true cost of the Iraq conflict

Getting involved in long wars should be avoided at all costs, warned the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu 2,000 years ago, especially wars of choice. It is a pity this sound piece of advice was so blatantly ignored by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair, the prime architects of today's long war in Iraq, which shows no sign of ending soon.

This is now set to be the costliest war in American history in terms of blood and treasure, with the exception of the Second World War, according to the Nobel Economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The Iraq conflict has cost the American taxpayer roughly three trillion dollars, hence the title of his new book, for which much of the statistical analysis has been done by his co-author Linda Bilmes.

This is an excellent introduction to how such open-ended operations should be analysed and understood. Without talking down, it is written for the general reader as well as the specialist, the plain person's guide to the human balance sheet to war and peace in the post-9/11 era.

It serves as an awful warning to British readers especially. It suggests that the sums of money themselves are not the most important cost to the people of both countries. At today's prices Stiglitz suggests that the real bill for the United States will be nearer US$4 trillion than US$3 trillion dollars (that is four million million) by the time the US forces can effect any significant withdrawal from Iraq. The overall cost of the Second World War from 1941 to 1945 was US$5 trillion on equivalent valuation.

Rather generously the authors suggest that the United Kingdom will get off more lightly, even to scale. The British put in 46,000 troops in March 2003, roughly a tenth of the invasion force. With a reduction to a garrison of about 2,500 British troops stationed round Basra this year, they calculate the overall current cost of operations in Iraq since 2003 and in Afghanistan since the end of 2001 comes to about £20 billion when long-term care costs are taken into account. They add the interesting qualification that they find it hard to get at the true figures in supplementary expenditure from the UK Government's contingency fund.

The latest revelations from the House of Commons Defence Committee indicate that Stiglitz and Bilmes are too optimistic in their estimates of what UK operations to date have cost. Britain is now spending well over £3 billion a year on immediate operational requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly double the official estimate made only last November.

The most startling part of the Stiglitz exposition is the human cost. America has lost around 4,000 service men and women killed in combat in the two theatres. However, Stiglitz calculates that the total number of casualties, killed and wounded, including the mentally as well as physically injured, is now running at about 65,000. Behind this lies a gruesome calculus: in the Second World War the allied armies suffered between two and three seriously wounded to every soldier killed; in the past 10 years this has gone up to seven to one, and now to more than 20 to one, such is the revolution in battlefield surgery. Many of those who survive are very cruelly wounded indeed, and will need full-time expert care for the rest of their lives.

The care of the injured is one of the biggest costs to the American people of the long war of Iraq. In the United Kingdom, the issue of the funding and long-term care for the wounded is all but ignored, officially and unofficially, in Whitehall. The authors are excellent on how the real numbers of injured are easily concealed in the official statistics. Here in Britain it is almost impossible to find out an accurate figure for the total numbers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and 2003. Casualties treated in theatre, and who return to duty though may report long-term damage, have just been dropped from many official reports. There is also the scandal of the criteria for compensation by which an injured soldier may claim compensation for only a number, but not all, of their injuries. One young paratrooper, who lost both his legs, has only been allowed about £300,000 compensation for his injuries which require round-the-clock assistance for the rest of his life, and this will cost some £2.5 million at least.

The book makes constructive suggestions for reform, such as only using reserve forces for a year at most. The same order of radical rethinking by the American Government and its forces did occur after Vietnam. There are signs, too, that it is happening again - led by deep-thinking officers like General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell who are revolutionising the way the US uses its forces, and in a direction diametrically opposite to the bludgeoning approach of the "shock and awe" doctrine of firepower before brainpower preached by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their neocon allies.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of this country. There seems little prospect of British forces quitting Iraq or bringing peace to Helmand soon. They are stuck. And the minds of their political masters seem jammed in neutral. They should read this book; we all should. It underlines the folly of Gordon Brown and Des Browne in the current underfunding of the forces, making them work to a peacetime budget while they are committed to two wars which show little sign of ending soon.

Back to homepage

       

The clear message that emerged from the symposium on child sexual abuse held in Rome from ...

According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ...

There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ...