According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.
Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:
* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.
* 2.5 million millionaires, or
* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.
The CIA absolutely bribes local officials. The issue is you need to bribe the right people:
1. People who will change their opinion, reliably, when bribed.
2. People who won't backstab you (aka: take the money, and attack you anyway).
Figuring this out is an intelligence problem. To get good intelligence, you need boots on the ground. To have boots on the ground, you need to protect them. Etc. etc.
With regards to Afghanistan culture: they have a different way of thinking than us Americans. Sure, some can be bribed with money, but a history of being a warzone for... I think 200 years at least... has made their culture strange and alien to us.
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IIRC, Afghanistan culture is about accepting and protecting of strangers, even when they are under attack. But as soon as the stranger leaves, you're allowed to shoot them or otherwise kill them again. So this makes #2 more difficult, you need to understand the local's religion, their culture, their legends and their stories. (I'm probably butchering the concept, but I read about the details a long time ago...)
In the case of Afghanistan, if US Troops could take advantage of the "accepting of strangers" culture, then US Troops will be protected by the locals. Diplomacy leads to better war-fighters and safer people. Play your cards right, and you don't even need to bribe people. You'll be a good-guy in their culture and they'll protect you.
This is a move very easy to explain: they thought they would be useful for them in the future. They feel no difference who kills whom, for as long they do so for their benefit.
Western overtures with Saddam Husain would be a great example. Second to US granting asylim to all batshit insane military mutineers in hopes of using them any time the new freedom fighters don't dance their tune: Haftar Khalifa, Husain Altaf
The West has adopted a very orientalistic concept of war as of late, as of it being purely symbolic bloodshed and ritualised sabre rattling just to compel "tribal elders" of another side to talks on your terms.
Bitter lessons from European genocidal, uncompromising warfare to the last drop of blood has been largely forgotten.
The next time the West will encounter an opponent who treats the war seriously will be its own 6 day war.
> You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and technology from American companies.
While there are wealthy individuals who profit from the military-industrial complex, it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program (with deaths of American troops and foreign civilians as a negative externality).
> it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program
The majority of it is precisely that. It's the only jobs & wealth redistribution program Republicans are willing to fund (though they never call it that). Pity it's so inefficient for that purpose.
It is, and you have whole communities being completely reliant on it for survival. But listen to Eisenhowers speech about the military-industrial complex. This reliance is created by design, and it is making some people extremely rich.
I think it's something of an open secret how much public policy (military and otherwise) is manipulated by wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists. What perhaps goes underexamined, is the extent to which Congress members (even those who grandstand on "fiscal conservatism") are extremely reluctant to cut any federal expenses that would result in a loss of jobs in their state/district (be it a closed military base, or a reduced contract with Lockheed Martin).
Middle-class voters may not actively be lobbying for the perpetual [Military/Prison/etc]-Industrial Complex; but the mere fact of who writes the checks for those voters' salaries and benefits makes the racket extremely difficult to unentrench, above and beyond the already problematic influence of the 0.001% who are shamelessly fleecing the taxpayer. It's a truly wicked problem.
That's the point of the whole War is a Racket we are discussing.
If the choice is between immeasurable human suffering, domestic corruption and jobs or just solving the problem, the war racket wins. Removing the profit motive is the key suggestion in the War is a Racket.
That is the wrong way to look at it. By this token digging holes in America is a profitable enterprise. If you pay hole diggers in America, hey all the money goes the American economy.
Whenever talking about an economic issue people have to stop thinking in terms of money and start thinking in terms of goods and services made.
The point of an economy is not to circulate money for kicks and giggles. Money is just to facilitate exchange of goods and services.
A working economy creates a large number of goods and services which the inhabitants wants and needs. You pay a worker to build a car and he makes something people benefit from. You pay a worker to make a missile and he makes something which does not improve the lives of anything. It is a complete waste of time and effort.
The money will funnel back into the US eventually anyways. Unless you have some reason to prefer giving defense contractors the money, the money might as well go to whatever middle eastern people like to buy from the US. The advantage of this scheme is that fewer lives need to be lost, the regions in question can become more stable and productive, and US interests are better promoted.
A bigger question is who did it flow back to and how can we track that? Certainly we have contractor operations that are US based, but it is not always clear if what they are doing aligns with American interests. Giving them more money may actually be increasing corruption.
Last I checked the lower middle class wages and wealth have been stagnant for years, healthcare not improved either. I see no strong indicator of this flow you mention (not saying it doesn't exist).
There is ample evidence of defense contractor stock values appreciating, including a network of contractors that are hard to fully track, so not always assured they are US based, and same for the investors in those companies.
Ex. Mercenaries from other countries, airplane wiring from India, etc.
I find it helps to think of the military as a socialist style make-work jobs program. That's not it's only function, but it is an important one. For the poor (boots on the ground types) it educates them, feeds/houses them, teaches them self discipline. During peace time it's an important economic ladder. For the middle class, it's about creating work for engineers, programmers, and scientist types.
During peace-time, I think there's a lot to be said about the ROI for the military, if the military is at some reasonable scale (which I think it is not).
With regards to the many Middle East (ME) wars, I think a lot of that is about maintaining and enforcing the petro-dollar. If the ME decides to start selling their oil in Euros or gold or some other currency, it will mean the end of the USA as we know it. The dollar will collapse and China or Russia will take over as the world hegemon. Many people really have a distaste for US hegemony, but unfortunately the real options on the table are not US vs nobody. It's US vs probably China. So the ROI is much more complicated in that regard.
The military has and will continue to be the politically-correct [to them] means of implementing a welfare state for republicans. I mean you get free high-quality insurance via tricare, free college via the post911 GI bill, subsided home loans via the VA — all the trappings of the welfare state but politically acceptable to most Republicans and centrist Democrats. The military-industrial-congressional complex is alive and well.
IMO there is no reason we should be killing people outside our borders or even have military outside our borders when there are much larger domestic problems that are unaddressed. I walk by homeless people shooting up right next to million+ dollar houses (yay Seattle + AMZN/MSFT) every day and fixing this shoes not seem to be the priority as the defense contractors and American people themselves are from this porkbarrel.
Of course war is a racket. And I agree with you that the US has been fighting wars of aggression and generally behaving in a despicable manner. Now, let's imagine what happens if/when the US decides to stop being so aggressive. I believe the Middle East begins to trade oil in Euros, gold, Yuan, or some other currency. Demand for the dollar collapses. The US economy collapses in a spectacularly violent way. Like a Venezuela/Zimbabwe kind of spectacular economic collapse. Then China, who is already putting Muslims (Uyghur) men in concentration camps and assigning rapists to live with their families and educate them into being good Communists. China who is committing mass murder to fill the market for human organs. China who is already colonizing Africa. China which is an etho-state with a dictator for life. China is going to start really flexing more around the globe.
What is your hypothesis on what happens across the globe in the absence of US hegemony and crazy wars. Do you believe a loss of the petro-dollar would lead to US collapse? Do you believe Chinese hegemony would happen, and if so, would it be better or worse than US hegemony?
If we are going to do opportunity costs, imagine where America would be if it spent that kind of money on its own damn people. Like education, healthcare, infrastructure, and the economic "cost" of enforcing clean air and water regulations, increasing fuel efficiency targets, and phasing out fossil fuels.
China has been using the last 19 years to do just that, building out their infrastructure and R&D (and in other countries, too, see the Belt and Road initiative) while the US has bogged itself down in the middle east. In 2003 when the US went to war in Iraq, the US GDP was 8 times the size of China's. Today the US GDP is 1.4 times China's. The Chinese economy has grown 24 times over in the last 25 years. The US economy has about tripled (a little less) in that time.
> According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.
Since the US just adds this to its national debt, there is no actual cost for the US. The cost is paid by holders of US government bonds (e.g. non-US central banks).
The US is literally paying for its wars with bonds. That’s why the US is so powerful — no other country can pay for wars using paper with stuff written on it (i.e. a bond).
Corruption is not dependable. There's always the option to simply just take your money, and not hold up to your end of the bargain. War ensures the outcome you desire.
(Read my comment in the context of the article. War ensures the cycle perpetuates, and our modern version of this article is maintaining the current status quo with the military industrial complex, ala the desired outcome of more wars.)
Except it doesn't. Every war the US has engaged in since WWII has had rather poor outcomes and cost a fortune. I would have risked failed corruption instead.
Anyway you don't have to dump a trillion in Iraq in one go. You would have bribed people with individual amounts over longer time and measured progress and outcomes.
I’ve thought about this as well... probably the “best” way to do it is the first, give everybody the money equally. It’s not a bribe, it’s a UBI, and it lifts the whole country out of poverty, which generally means the curtailing of whatever issues we probably had that was driving us to conflict with them in the first place.
kneejerk thought : total _dollars_ cost is $2.5 trillion, whereas other dimensions have costs too, lives lost, morale, reputation. Not sure how to think about any of that.
Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:
* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.
* 2.5 million millionaires, or
* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.
corruption >> war, almost every time.