Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the White House another $ 1 trillion in the next 10 years
Experts from the American research organization National Priorities Project (NPP) told their fellow citizens that the total spending of the White House on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the present stage has reached an astronomical figure and exceeded 1.05 trillion. dollars, of which 747.3 billion went to Iraq, and the remaining 299 were spent in Afghanistan.
Experts from this highly respected overseas "egghead" brain trust, which was formed in 1983 in Northampton, PA. Massachusetts, constantly assess federal spending on US national security, and also consider the impact of White House policies in this area on ensuring the protection of their compatriots from external and internal threats to their security in the short and long term.
FROM THE FIRST WORLD TO NOW
In the regularly published reviews entitled "The Cost of War", the Project's specialists cited their calculations showing that American taxpayers gave out of their pockets for the wars that the Pentagon began in Afghanistan and Iraq in October 2001 and March 2003. significantly more dollars than they spent on all of the military actions that Washington has undertaken outside its oceans since World War II and which the White House continues to this day.
Some time before the NPP analysts appeared on their website, the Congressional Research Service provided their own estimates of Washington's spending on world wars. According to them, the White House spent only $ 253 billion on the First World War. But then the prices for the military actions of the Pentagon troops skyrocketed. The fight against the Nazis (in 2008 prices) cost overseas politicians and taxpayers $ 4.1 trillion. They had to spend 320 billion on operations in Korea. The Vietnamese power study of the Pentagon cost the Americans 686 billion.
According to NPP experts, the trillion dollars spent would be enough to pay 21 million American police officers for a year, or this amount could be spent on training in US colleges 19 million young Americans over 10 years.
Unlike the former owner of the Oval Office chair, George W. Bush, the current US President Barack Obama is deeply convinced that the front line of the fight against world terrorism is not so much ancient Babylon, in which America allegedly achieved final successes and exterminated militants, as Afghanistan. It is there, according to the deep conviction of the head of the White House, that the main centers of the spread of global terror are located, which must be completely destroyed so that this infection ceases to amaze the world. At the beginning of last year, the president signed a decree according to which the number of American troops in the region should be increased by several tens of thousands of people and by the middle of this year it should be 102,000 troops. To accomplish this task, Congress allocated $ 33 billion to Obama.
By the winter of this year, only 43,000 American soldiers and officers will remain in the battlefields of Babylon, where the United States began its last war in the spring of 2003. According to the agreement, which was signed by the leadership of the United States and Iraq in November 2008, all the American military must leave this country by the end of 2011.
Since February of this year, each month of the stay of troops in Afghanistan cost the American treasury $ 6, 7 billion. Baghdad was somewhat cheaper - the Pentagon spent $ 5, 5 billion on it. But prices continue to rise. According to American military experts, by September 30 of this year, i.e. by the end of the end of the 2010 fiscal year, the US will spend about $ 105 billion on military operations in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, almost half will be spent - 66 billion. In fiscal 2011, which begins on October 1 of this year, the American military will spend $ 117 billion on Kabul, while spending on Baghdad will be further reduced to only $ 46 billion. The total spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010 is shown in the figure.
10 FUTURE YEARS
According to the latest report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) late last year, the Pentagon's spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror could rise by another $ 1 trillion over the next 9 years. The volume of these expenses, according to experts, will be determined by the number of military contingents that the White House intends to keep on the territory of these countries.
True, almost three years ago, in his speech to members of the budget committee, CBO director Peter Orszag gave slightly more gloomy estimates of the future costs of the US Department of Defense. According to him, the total expenditures of the US budget for the waging of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for the global fight against terrorism by 2017 could amount to 2.4 trillion. Doll.
BUK experts have assessed the costs of US military operations in these countries, considering two scenarios for the development of events. One of them envisaged a significant reduction in the Pentagon's military contingents and Washington's decision to gradually withdraw troops from these hot spots. According to experts, in this case, both wars could cost America's taxpayers from 1.2 to 1.7 trillion. Doll.
Comparative chart of US military spending in the Middle East.
The second scenario, on the other hand, assumed that the White House administration would continue to build up US troops in these two theaters of war. Such a course of events, according to the calculations of CBO analysts, should result in excess costs for waging wars and for the fight against global terrorism in the amount of $ 705 billion. put 8 thousand dollars on the budgetary table of the Pentagon.
In their assessments, BUK experts took into account the costs not only for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also considered spending on fighting militants in other regions, on diplomatic actions by the US Department of State, as well as on medical care, compensation for veterans of these wars and benefits to the families of soldiers who died.
Specialists of the SVO also estimated the expenses of the US Department of Defense on the actual military construction. According to their calculations, from 2011 to 2028, the Pentagon, given the current level of its budgetary requests, will spend on average $ 573 billion per year. True, the experts did not include in this amount the costs of conducting military operations of American troops abroad. Thus, according to analysts, only for the maintenance of their army and its equipping with modern weapons at military bases in the United States, America's taxpayers will have to pay $ 10.3 trillion. Doll.
The reported average annual spending by the Pentagon is 7% higher than the allocation allocated by the US Department of Defense for the equipment and maintenance of territorial troops in the current fiscal year. At the same time, these calculations did not include the costs of maintaining and equipping military units of the military department in foreign countries and the conduct of hostilities there. According to CBO analysts, if the unplanned expenditures of the Department of Defense are taken into account when considering the US military budget, then the average annual amount of its expenditures until 2028 will be $ 632 billion, which is 18% more than the appropriations allocated to the American military department in fiscal 2010. But in 2028, the average Pentagon spending on the maintenance and equipment of troops in the United States alone will amount to 670 billion.
According to experts from the US Congressional Budget Office, in the period from 2013 to 2028, about 35% of the unplanned expenses of the Pentagon will be spent on military operations outside the United States. But, as one of the experts of the Russian General Staff noted in an interview with an NVO correspondent, these costs are unlikely to be recouped. After all, hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars, which American analysts talk about, are spent not on the fight against the notorious global terrorism, but on the introduction of the Western model of social order in these countries. However, their population has a completely different mentality, and essentially lives according to medieval ideas and norms, in accordance with Islamic doctrine, which in no way corresponds to the principles that Europeans and Americans are trying to introduce. Therefore, all expenses will simply go nowhere.
