The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Linda J. Bilmes

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(Hardcover)

Average Customer Rating: Customer Rating for this product is 5 out of 5 (1 ratings)

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  • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
  • Pub. Date: March 2008
  • ISBN-13: 9780393067019
  • Sales Rank: 4,596
  • 311pp
 
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Synopsis

Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.

The Washington Post - Carlos Lozada

Stiglitz and Bilmes methodically build a compelling case that the costs of the war far exceed the $500 billion or so officially spent on it thus far. Yet by making many assumptions about the future course of the conflict—from its duration (through at least 2017, they predict) to its impact on global oil prices ($5 to $10 extra per barrel, for seven to eight years)—the authors will leave many readers unconvinced. Will the war prove extraordinarily expensive? Absolutely. But will the price tag be $2 trillion? $3 trillion? $5 trillion? It's impossible to know…Stiglitz and Bilmes should be commended—not disparaged—for their painstaking work. But war critics should weigh the numbers carefully…The book's title suggests a level of precision that is not borne out in its pages. The book's stronger lesson is the sheer range of costs—and foregone opportunities—that the authors ably identify.

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Biography

Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of Making Globalization Work and Globalization and Its Discontents. Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a former assistant secretary for management and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

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Number of Reviews: 1
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Customer Rating for this product is 5 out of 5 Useful estimates of the real costs of Bush's wars
Will Podmore, A reviewer, 04/24/2008

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard, have produced an estimate of the real cost of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, 4,000 US troops have been killed, 58,000 wounded, and 100,000 have returned home with serious mental disorders. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that the USA’s total lifetime medical, disability and social security costs for the two wars will be $717 billion through to 2017. They estimate that the war against Iraq will cost the USA a total of $2.65 trillion through to 2017. The war on Afghanistan will cost another $850 billion through to 2017. The total is $3.5 trillion. 'Bush misunderestimated it would be $50 billion, wrong by a factor of seventy.' This works out at $25,000 for every US household. The costs of the two wars to the rest of the world are another $3 trillion, largely because the invasion has driven up oil prices from $25 a barrel to $120. This has cost the world $800 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated $1.6 trillion by 2015. It has cost us in Britain £24 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated £50 billion by 2015. The wars’ direct military costs to us in Britain so far are £8.7 billion the estimated future costs till 2015 are another £7 billion. Veterans’ disability and medical costs are £2.3 billion. The social costs of deaths and disabilities are another £2 billion. The total is £20 billion, £800 per household. The First World War cost the USA $577 billion, the war on Korea $295 billion, the war on Vietnam $670 billion and the Gulf War $94 billion. The total cost of these four wars was $1.64 trillion, which is just half the cost of the two current wars.

Also recommended: Iraq: the logic of withdrawal, by Anthony Arnove. Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks. Defeat: why America and Britain lost Iraq, by Jonathan Steele. The age of war: the United States confronts the world, by Gabriel Kolko.