History is replete with the stories of nations that have gone to war wildly underestimating what their
campaigns will cost in lives and money. The war begun in 2001 in Afghanistan, which the United States
soon expanded into Pakistan, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, have been stark examples of this
phenomenon. The Costs of War project – the joint effort of a team of 37 economists, anthropologists,
political scientists, legal experts, human rights activists, and physicians – is an attempt to tally that cost
and to ask for an official accounting where one cannot currently be made.
Those costs are counted in people killed, injured, and sickened as a result of the wars, and of people
dislocated from their homes. Those people number in the millions, and include Americans, Afghans,
Pakistanis, and Iraqis. The human costs include both past harms and harms that will only appear later or
continue to reverberate for years to come in each of those countries, in addition to other countries the
US has targeted or collaborated with in the War on Terror, such as Yemen, for example.
The costs of the wars are also financial. The project has begun to estimate those costs for the US. The
costs are also found in changes in the social and political landscape of the US and the countries where
the wars have been waged.
The scale of the impact, its ongoing nature, and the need for amelioration and prevention create a sharp
need to understand what those wars’ consequences are and will be.