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• Related Materials

  • Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism, October 2007
    Essential Documents
    October 24, 2007

  • Training Requirements for U.S. Ground Forces Deploying in Support of Operation Iraqi Freedom
    Essential Documents
    April 9, 2008

  • Hormats: Iraq War Historic for Lack of Cost Transparency
    Interview
    March 28, 2008

  • Rolling Stone: The Myth of the Surge
    By Nir Rosen
    Must Read
    March 6, 2008

  • Cost of Iraq War Hinges on Oil Question
    By Michael Moran, Executive Editor, CFR.org
    Op-Ed
    March 18, 2008

  See Also

  United States, Iraq, Defense Policy & Budget, Wars and Warfare

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  Trying to Make Sense of the Cost of War

  Author:	Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History

  March 20, 2008
  Chicago Tribune

  Three trillion dollars is the amount that Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes put as the cost of the Iraq war in their new book “The Three Trillion Dollar War.” The book makes some good points, including that Washington has underestimated war costs from the beginning. But Stiglitz and Bilmes are off the mark in arguing that the current conflict darkens the nation’s financial future.

  To the math: To arrive at their $3 trillion, Stiglitz and Bilmes start with oil. They carefully note that a good share of the quadrupling of oil prices is a result of non-war reasons such as Chinese and U.S. demand.

  The war, they determine, accounted for $5 or $10 of the per-barrel rise from $25 just after the war started to $100 today, a share they deem “significant.” They also argue that Washington is vastly underestimating medical care for veterans, and that over their lifetimes we will spend as much on the veterans as we have on the war to date.

  In their best-case scenario, under which the U.S. presence in Iraq drops to 55,000 non-combat troops by 2012, the total budgetary costs for the conflict add up to $1.7 trillion. They posit that a more realistic figure would be $2.65 trillion.

  View full text of article

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  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  Task Force Reports

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This report identifies four emerging issues—poverty and inequality, public security, human mobility, and energy security—that represent fundamental challenges and opportunities for Latin America and for U.S. policy toward it.

  U.S.-China Relations: An Affirmative Agenda, A Responsible Course

  This report takes stock of the changes under way in China and what they mean for China and for U.S.-China relations.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

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