战争的真正代价(译者姓名佚，知情者请通知本站，本版为人文与社会编辑小组校订重译:: Http://humanities.cn)
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2005年起，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者 约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨（Joseph Stiglitz）开始了计算伊拉克战争的艰难过程。在他与琳达•比尔姆斯合作的新书(《三兆美元的战争：伊拉克冲突的真实代价》The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Norton, 2008. 一兆=一万亿)中，他展示了急功近利的预算决策，后果发生后的遮遮掩掩，以及一场非正义的战争将怎样在将来的年代中继续影响我们所有人。阿依达•爱德马里安（Aida Edemariam）与约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨，进行了一次会谈。
春日时断时续的阳光温暖着新哥特风格伦敦国会大厦的石灰岩建筑，成群结队的观光客在四周游逛，但米尔班克的地下咖啡馆幽暗僻静，约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨看来有些睡眼惺忪。两天来，他一直在发表言论：在伦敦经济学院(LSE)、在恰谈出版社(Chatham House)、对着数个电视摄制组――他马上还要飞回华盛顿，在国会面前阐述他的新书《三兆美元的战争》。不管议员们心存怎样的芥蒂——必定会有一些——他们将不得不倾听，因为斯蒂格利茨的权威地位与一般的作者不可同日而语。作为一位诺贝尔经济学奖得主，一名在比尔•克林顿的总统经济顾问委员会经历了四年的磨砺，又在世界银行担任了三年首席经济学家的学者（在此期间他对全球化发起了一场影响深远的批判），斯蒂格利茨能够写出一本真切地改变人们对眼下这场战争视角的书。《三兆美元的战争》揭示所有的人已经并将感受到怎样源自战争的影响，不管是华尔街还是英国繁华商业街、不管是伊拉克平民还是非洲小商人，没有人能在将来漫长的时间中，逃脱战争的影响。
2005年的某一天，斯蒂格利茨和同样曾任克林顿经济顾问的琳达•比尔姆斯（Linda Bilmes）注意到，国会预算办公室对迄今为止的战争投入作出的官方估计大约是5000亿美元。这个数字太低了，他们根本无法相信，决定展开一次调查。他们合著的论文于2006年1月发表，文章对这个数字作出了幅度惊人的修正——应该是1万亿到2万亿美元之间。根据斯蒂格利茨现在的说法，即便这个数字他们也已经有意做了一些保留："我们不想让人觉得太不可思议。"
共和党人怎么说呢？斯蒂格利茨疲倦地说道：“他们的反应不外乎两种。第一：布什总统的答复是，‘我们的战争不是由那些吹毛求疵(green eye shaded)的会计师或者经济学家的计算决定的。’我们的回应是，‘对，珍珠港事件时你也不是根据这些计算来决策，但当你面对一场有选择的战争，至少应该用这些计算来证明你的时机是恰当的，你的准备是充分的。你必须通过计算来判断是否存在更有效地达到目的的其他方式。第二种批评——这一点我们是承认的——就是我们只考虑了代价，忽略了收益。可是，我们看不到任何收益。在我们看来，我们不知道这场战争到底有什么好处。”
探究锋芒既露，斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯继续了他们的探索。对一些往往被有意隐藏的帐户进行为期数月的跟踪调查后，他们发现布什的伊拉克大冒险保守估计将花去美国——仅仅是美国——3万亿美元。其它国家，包括英国，加在一起可能将花费差不多相同的数目。随着调查的进行，他们取得的成就远不只是得出一个难以置信的数字：通过详述流程、制作开销细目、严谨地罗列出那些目光短浅的预算决策所造成的后果，他们描绘出了一幅充斥着欺瞒和不诚信的图景，驱动着这些欺瞒和不诚信的力量显然都来自最根源处。他们的发现，有一些是我们之前已经听说过，有一些我们曾经怀疑过，还有一些则是闻所未闻——将这些发现一起放在情境中，它们的冲击力是惊人的。没有几个人不会觉得——无论发动战争的动机是什么，它的发展过程在道义上是令人担忧的；要想探究其原因，追踪资金的来龙去脉是一个绝佳的方法。
下个月，美军在伊拉克的战争就是五周年了——这比美国参与2次世界大战的时间都长。每天的军事开销（不包括将来的伤员救治等方面）已经比在越南12年消耗总和还要多，是朝鲜战争的两倍。美国每月在伊拉克和阿富汗要耗费160亿美元，这些仅仅是用于维持运转的开支（也就是说不包括国防部的常规开销）；这相当于联合国整整一年的预算。大量的现金消失了——例如媒体广泛报道的联盟驻伊拉克临时管理当局那笔88亿美元的伊拉克发展基金；还有较少见诸报端的，消失在国防部的种种漏洞之间的几百万美元——这个部门在过去十年间没有一次能通过财会审核。一旦规模超过一家杂货铺的大小，国防部的会计制度就无法保证统计的准确性了。基于这样的制度进行的财务管理缺陷实在太大，事实上很多时候根本不知道究竟花了多少钱，或者花在了什么地方。
最严重的一条误导性信息是：2007年1月，政府宣布他们大肆鼓吹的"大增兵"行动将耗资56亿美元。但这只是作战部队四个月的开销——还有15000～28000名后勤部队官兵等着开饷，这一点他们没有提。同时，这组官方数据也没有计入阵亡抚恤或者伤员救治费用，尽管当前7：1的伤员与死亡人数亡比已经是美国历史上的最高。再一次地，国防部选择了保密和误导：官方伤亡记录只列出了战斗减员。斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯在书中指出，针对那些"非战斗行动"伤亡——直升机坠毁、训练事故以及所有死于疾病的人（医疗撤运的人员中有三分之二是因为疾病）——是有一项专门的、难以被察觉的统计的；那些没有经过空运的伤员，也就是说在战场上实施治疗的，则完全被排除在外了。斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯碰巧发现了一份不完整的清单；为了获得完整的数据统计，退伍军人机构不得不搬出《信息自由法案》（当这些数据被计入后，伤员与死亡比就上升到15：1）。负责帮助负伤人员的退伍军人事务部在战争初期是根据战前预算工作的，因此他们的超支程度已是灾难性的；至今他们还需要解决越南战争的大量遗留问题。许多退伍军人被迫寻求私立医疗救治；即便政府承担了治疗和补助的费用，适格性的举证责任也在士兵一方，而不是在政府。三兆美元包括了阵亡抚恤，以及在今后50年里医治那些伤势严重程度是军队外科医生们前所未见的军人。
通过设置不同的情境，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯例举出从这几兆美元中拿出哪怕一兆能做什么：800万套住房单元，或者1500万名公立学校教师，或为5.3亿儿童提供一年的健康保健，或为4300万学生提供上大学的奖学金。三兆美元本可以解决美国半个世纪的社会保障问题。美国目前每年在非洲花费50亿美元，并且正在担心在那里会败给中国的力量。"50亿美元大概够打10天的仗，"斯蒂格利茨说，"这样的数字会改变你对一切事物的判断尺度。"
我问斯蒂格利茨，他的发现中哪个是最让他不安的。他笑了，笑得几乎没有快意。"事实上有很多——有些我们是持怀疑态度的，但有些我根本无法相信。"比如说一个工作是保安的签约工作者一年可以拿到40万美元，与之相对的，一名士兵一年能拿到4万。我们能够想到会有差距，但没想到差距如此巨大；还有，由于在伊拉克工作的人很难得到保险，所以保险费是由政府支付的；还有，如果这些承包商/签约工作者负伤或者被杀了，政府还会根据最高标准支付死亡和伤害补偿金。
可以想见，这将迫使军队提高入伍附加奖励的标准（事实上军队招募新兵的心情是如此的迫切，以至于他们连被判有罪的重罪犯人都收）。"我们就这样开始了一场自己和自己的竞赛。任何一个脑子正常的人都不会这么做，布什政府这样做了……因此我无法相信。而这些附加奖励也不包括在政府所说的开销里。"
接着他们发现入伍附加奖励是有条件的：例如士兵如果在第一个月负伤，就得退还奖励；还有，"出于显而易见的原因，士兵要对他们的装备负责。如果弄丢了头盔，你需要赔偿。如果你已被炸飞，头盔也不见了，他们依然会给你寄账单。” 一个遭受了严重的脑损伤的士兵依然被索款12000美元。一些家属不得不掏钱给他们的孩子买防弹衣，以便在短期内节省政府开支；那些无力支付的人则容易受伤，最终还是由政府来出更多的钱。还有一个情况，直到2006年罗伯特•盖茨取代唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德担任国防部长，国防部才同意用装配了防地雷伏击装甲（MRAP）的车辆取代悍马，前者抵御路边炸弹的能力要强得多；截至当时，简易爆炸装置（IED）已经导致1500名美国人丧生。"这种贪小便宜吃大亏的举动实在让人难以置信。"
然而从另一个层面看，斯蒂格利茨并不感到意外，因为这样的决策是在理性上完全捉摸不定的布什政府的一贯作风。他说，布什政府的大体行为方式就是一锅“混合了公司危机救市、公司福利、没有任何可靠的思想体系基础的自由市场经济的大杂烩。这种古怪的大杂烩其实促成了在伊拉克的失败。”有一些原因已经被反复提及了：在鼓吹民主的同时无视国际民主进程；在伊拉克尚未做好准备的情况下推行自由主义。斯蒂格利茨在这个问题上借助了美国国际开发署寄给他的一封电子邮件，邮件中抱怨财政部阻碍他们的工作。"他们说，'你能帮帮我们吗？因为我们在努力推动商业运营，但美国财政部在紧缩信贷，所以现在这个国家没有钱了。"
然后当然还有政府坚决推行的"单一供应商投标"：例如把巨额长期合同交给哈利伯顿公司，而不是通过投标决定。斯蒂格利茨委婉地质疑道："一个学者也许会说，'自由市场怎么能要求单一供应商合同呢？'"——但当前政府并不是这样运转的。承包商的放肆牟利我们已经很了解了，但斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯关心的是这些行为的经济影响，这种影响目前看来是恶性的。当然，自由市场的理想必须用来规范伊拉克，而不是哈利伯顿（该公司在单一供应商合同中得到了至少193亿美元的）。所以保罗•布雷默（Paul Bremer），联盟驻伊拉克临时管理当局的头，废除了许多进口关税，并为企业税和所得税制定了上限。可想而知，这导致了普遍的资产剥离，把伊拉克的企业暴露在自由竞争之中——这意味着许多公司倒闭了，造成更多的人失业。（斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯在书中写道：“在转型经济中，私有化和自由市场能起到多大帮助当然是存在疑问的。”这句话是婉辞的典范。因为斯蒂格利茨以在2002年的《全球化和它的不满》一书中陈述穷国所承受的伤害而著称，而且由于他的这个观点，他失去了在世界银行的职位。）依据美国的采购法，许多重建工作落在了昂贵的美国公司手中，而不是更廉价的伊拉克公司——这是进一步的资源浪费（例如一个油漆刷涂工程花费了2500万而不是500万）；这些美国公司为了降低他们的固有成本以获取更高利润，从尼泊尔等国输入廉价劳工——尽管现在每两个伊拉克人就有一个失业。
那么，这一切遵循的不是纯粹的新保守主义思想，斯蒂格利茨说："更贴切地说法是方便主义意识形态。"最能说明这是一种怎样的意识形态的，是另一个让斯蒂格利茨无法相信的事实——布什在进行战争的同时推行减税政策。在斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯看来，这完全是一记阴招。提高税收，并且像世界大战时那样找一套共同奉献的说辞，会让美国人意识到他们要为战争付出怎样的代价，会导致抵触情绪更早地滋生。解决办法是借贷——每年的利息达数千亿，到2017年债务将总计一兆美元左右。这一届政府9个月后就下台了；后继的几代政府和几代人将要为此买单。
与此同时，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯指出，联储也是迷惑大众的帮凶，因为它"把利率降得比原本的还要低，罔顾贷款标准的放宽，从而刺激美国家庭去借更多的钱——同时也花更多的钱。"在这个问题上，阿兰•格林斯潘鼓励人们去申请可变利率抵押贷款，尽管此时的居民储蓄率已经是自大萧条以来首次出现负值。个人承担着前所未有的债务，与此同时长期的房地产泡沫又让他们觉得自己很富有（并且对那些海外冒险减少了关注）——此番景象自然也波及到了大西洋的这一边（指欧洲）。
我们现在知道，不能再这样继续下去——战争产生的另一个影响也是原因之一。不管轰炸巴格达的那个饱受争议的理由到底是什么，廉价石油至少不是答案。事实上油价在过去5年间已经从每桶25美元蹿升至100美元——对石油公司和产油国是件大好事，它们连同承包商们是这场战争的唯一受益者，其他人都不是。经过对未来市场的估计，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯推断，伊拉克的分裂和不稳定是导致这种大幅度增长的直接原因。每年会进口大约50亿桶原油的美国，仅因为这项价格的增长，每年就要额外支付250亿美元；预计到2015年仅就石油这一项，这个数字将增至每年1.6兆美元（相比之下，最近推出的1250亿美元的经济促进计划用斯蒂格利茨的话说只是'杯水车薪'）。
高油价对家庭、城市和国家的预算造成了直接影响；同时还导致美国的GDP下降。当利率终于做出相应的上调时，数十万业主发现他们无力偿还债务，引发了一场致命的还贷拖欠的海啸，把美国推向经济衰退的边缘，也把诺森罗克银行拖向了深渊——同时，这一切也对英国的购房者和银行间接造成了影响。
由此斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯指出，任何战争有益经济的想法都是迷思。当然，这种迷思很有说服力，在某些特定的情境中，例如第二次世界大战，这种说法看上去是正确的——但在1939年，美国和欧洲正处在萧条期；市场有充分的供给，但人民没有足够的钱去购买。军备生产意味着就业机会，更多的人有了更多可支配的收入等等——但当前和平时期的西方经济在就业几乎饱和的情况下运转。正如斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯所说："钱花在军备上就等于打了水漂"；投资在教育、基础建设、科研、卫生保健上以求长远回报要好得多。但是，任何试图把战争和经济剥离开的想法也是幼稚的。斯蒂格利茨说："许多人没想到经济会超越战争成为（美国大选）的关键议题，因为人们没想到经济会如此的脆弱。某种程度上说我也是这样。所以这本书的观点之一就是，在这次竞选中我们不存在两个议题——我们只有一个议题，至少说，是两个联系极其紧密的议题。
被推向悬崖边的并非只是美国，而是整个世界经济。当然，压在其它国家肩上的万亿重担包括：被摧毁的伊拉克经济，数以万计的伊拉克人死去，对邻国来说还有吸收上千难民的代价，联军的伤亡（戈登•布朗在战前准备了10亿英镑；截至2007年末，伊拉克和阿富汗的直接运转成本是70亿英镑并且仍在增加）。而在斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯看来，油价的上涨同样也意味着欧洲和远东的石油进口工业国要支付大约1.1万亿美元。对发展中国家来说这是毁灭性的：他们注意到了国际能源署的一项研究，通过对13个非洲国家的采样他们发现，油价上涨“导致他们的人均收入下降了3%，幅度超过了近年他们所接受外国援助的增长度，这有可能导致这些国家再一次陷入危机。”斯蒂格利茨的著名事迹之一就是批评美国把全球化当成宣传自己权威的讲台；而今他平静地说："是的，身处于全球经济中就是这样。你犯下一个决策错误，全世界人民都会受牵连。"
【以上已完成 10/08】
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because "the saving rate [in America] is zero," says Stiglitz, "that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America's war." The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn't have the money to bail out its own banks. "When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank." This creates a precedent of dependence, "and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves - it's that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan - that has all changed the US's economic position in the world."
当然，借贷的几万亿美元总得有来源。按斯蒂格利茨的说法，"（美国）的储蓄利率为零，这意味着（战争的）资金必须从国外募集。所以，资助美国的战争的是中国。"事实上美国目前的严重赤字致使它连自己的银行都保不住。"当美林集团和花旗银行遇到困难的时候，帮助他们脱困的是国外的主权基金。我们必须放弃许多的所有权份额。现在的花旗银行的头号股东是中东。它应该叫中东银行，而不是花旗银行。"这开创了一个依附的先例，"不论我们是在依赖中东石油资金还是中国的储备金——这种依赖性才是我们应该担忧的。这个巨大的变化——过去8年的借贷已经超过了自里根政府以来的借贷总和——已经改变了美国在世界经济中的地位。
So quite apart from the war, does he think a particular kind of unfettered market has had its day? "Yes. I think that anybody who believes that the banks know what they're doing has to have their head examined. Clearly, unfettered markets have led us to this economic downturn, and to enormous social problems." Combined with the war, whoever inherits the White House faces a crisis of epic proportions. Where do they go from here? "The way that shapes the debate," says Stiglitz, "is that Americans have to say, 'Even if we stay for another two years, just two years, and we're spending $12bn a month up front in Iraq, and it's costing us another 50% in healthcare, disability, bringing it up to $18bn a month in Iraq, and you look at that in another 24 months, we're talking about half a trillion dollars more for two years - forgetting about the economic cost, the ancillary costs, the social costs - just looking at the budgetary cost - not including the interest - you have to say, is this the way we want to spend a half a trillion dollars? Will it make America stronger? Will it make the Middle East safer? Is this the way we want to spend it?"
那么除了战争，他是否认为一个古怪的无规则市场正走上舞台？"是的。我认为要是有谁还相信银行知道自己在做什么，那他就该去检查一下脑子。很显然，这个无规则市场引发了我们的经济倒退以及大量社会问题。"再加上战争，无论谁接手白宫都将面临一场前所未有的巨大危机。他们应该怎么办？"辩论应该围绕着这样一个问题，"斯蒂格利茨说，"美国人应该自问，'即便我们再待两年，只是两年时间，我们在伊拉克每个月要花去120亿美元，健康和伤残保障需要再花50%，这样就增加到了180亿。过24个月再看，那就是两年超过5000亿的投入——把经济成本、附加成本和社会成本暂时抛在一边吧——只要看看预算成本——不包括利息——你会说，5000亿美元应该就这样花掉吗？这样能让美国更强大吗？这样能让中东更安全吗？这是我们想要的投入方式吗？"
Far better, he suggests, to leave rapidly and in a dignified manner, and to spend some of it on helping Iraqis reconstruct their own country - and the rest on investing in and strengthening the American economy, so that it can retain its independence, and have the wherewithal, at least, to play a responsible role in the world. The book ends with a list of 18 specific reforms arising from Stiglitz and Bilmes's discoveries, focusing on exactly how to fund and run a war from now on (depend not on emergency funds and borrowing but on surtaxes, for example, so that voters know exactly what it is they are paying for, and can vote accordingly). He has been approached by Barack Obama as a possible adviser should he reach the White House, although he says, "I've gone beyond the age where I would want to be in Washington full time. I would be interested in trying to help shape the bigger picture issues, and in particular the issues associated with America positioning itself in the new global world, and re-establishing the bonds with other countries that have been so damaged by the Bush administration."
I suggest, as devil's advocate, that to count costs in the way he has, and to advise retrenchment, might be seen as encouraging America to return to isolationism. "No. I think that's fundamentally wrong. The problem with Iraq was that it was the wrong war, and the wrong set of issues. Obama was very good about this. He said, 'I'm not against war - I'm just against stupid wars.' And I feel very much the same way. While we were worried about WMD that did not exist in Iraq, WMD did occur in North Korea. To use an American expression, we took our eye off the ball. And while we were fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan got worse, Pakistan got worse. So because we were fighting battles that we couldn't win, we lost battles that we could have." To discover that those lost battles included better healthcare for millions of Americans, a robust world economy, a healthier and more independent Africa, and a more stable Middle East, seems worth a bit of green-eye-shaded number crunching.
他建议尽可能迅速地、有尊严地离开，这样要好的多。把一部分钱用在帮助伊拉克人重建他们的国家——其它的用于注资和巩固美国经济，从而保持它的独立性。同时，至少保留一笔资金用于支持美国在世界各地发挥应有的作用。书的末尾处列出了斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯研究得出的18个具体的改革方案，着眼于从今往后该如何进行战争，如何筹措资金（例如通过附加税的形式，而不是通过应急基金和借贷，这样选民就能够知道他们的钱到底用在了什么地方，并据此进行投票）。巴拉克•奥巴马已经试图邀请他担任顾问，也许即将前往白宫供职，尽管他说："我已经过了全职待在华盛顿的年纪了。我对参与大环境的塑造更感兴趣，尤其是事关美国在这个全新世界中的地位，以及重新建立与其它国家的联系的问题——这些联系在布什政府治下遭到了破坏。"
本着针锋相对的立场，我提出如果按照他的方式计算成本，并建议紧缩开支，那似乎会让美国重新回到孤立主义。"不。我认为这从根本上是错误的。伊拉克的问题在于这是一场错误的战争，一系列错误的问题。奥巴马很清楚这一点。他说，'我不反对战争——我只是反对愚蠢的战争。'我也有同感。当我们为了伊拉克那些不存在的大规模杀伤性武器忧心忡忡时，朝鲜真的出现了大规模杀伤性武器。用美国人的话说，我们的眼睛没盯住球。伊拉克一开战，阿富汗的情况就开始恶化，巴基斯坦就开始恶化。所以，由于我们在打一场不可能获胜的战争，一些本该获胜的战役我们就输了。"当我们发现，我们输掉的包括为数百万美国人提供更好的健康保障，一个富有活力的世界经济，一个更健康更独立的非洲，一个更稳定的中东，那么让那些吹毛求疵的家伙们多做几道算术题似乎还是值得的。
重要数字
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
The true cost of war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan
In 2005, a Nobel prize-winning economist began the painstaking process of calculating the true cost of the Iraq war. In his new book, he reveals how short-sighted budget decisions, cover-ups and a war fought in bad faith will affect us all for decades to come. Aida Edemariam meets Joseph Stiglitz
Fitful spring sunshine is warming the neo-gothic limestone of the Houses of Parliament, and the knots of tourists wandering round them, but in a basement cafe on Millbank it is dark, and quiet, and Joseph Stiglitz is looking as though he hasn't had quite enough sleep. For two days non-stop he has been talking - at the LSE, at Chatham House, to television crews - and then he is flying to Washington to testify before Congress on the subject of his new book. Whatever their reservations - and there will be a few - representatives will have to listen, because not many authors with the authority of Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, an academic tempered by four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank (during which time he developed an influential critique of globalisation), will have written a book that so urgently redefines the terms in which to view an ongoing conflict. The Three Trillion Dollar War reveals the extent to which its effects have been, and will be, felt by everyone, from Wall Street to the British high street, from Iraqi civilians to African small traders, for years to come.
Some time in 2005, Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, who also served as an economic adviser under Clinton, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion. Even that, Stiglitz says now, was deliberately conservative: "We didn't want to sound outlandish."
So what did the Republicans say? "They had two reactions," Stiglitz says wearily. "One was Bush saying, 'We don't go to war on the calculations of green eye-shaded accountants or economists.' And our response was, 'No, you don't decide to fight a response to Pearl Harbour on the basis of that, but when there's a war of choice, you at least use it to make sure your timing is right, that you've done the preparation. And you really ought to do the calculations to see if there are alternative ways that are more effective at getting your objectives. The second criticism - which we admit - was that we only look at the costs, not the benefits. Now, we couldn't see any benefits. From our point of view we weren't sure what those were."
Appetites whetted, Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, is that in fact Bush's Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. And in doing so they have achieved something much greater than arriving at an unimaginable figure: by describing the process, by detailing individual costs, by soberly listing the consequences of short-sighted budget decisions, they have produced a picture of comprehensive obfuscation and bad faith whose power comes from its roots in bald fact. Some of their discoveries we have heard before, others we may have had a hunch about, but others are completely new - and together, placed in context, their impact is staggering. There will be few who do not think that whatever the reasons for going to war, its progression has been morally disquieting; following the money turns out to be a brilliant way of getting at exactly why that is.
Next month America will have been in Iraq for five years - longer than it spent in either world war. Daily military operations (not counting, for example, future care of wounded) have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam, and twice as much as the Korean war. America is spending $16bn a month on running costs alone (ie on top of the regular expenses of the Department of Defence) in Iraq and Afghanistan; that is the entire annual budget of the UN. Large amounts of cash go missing - the well-publicised $8.8bn Development Fund for Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, for example; and the less-publicised millions that fall between the cracks at the Department of Defence, which has failed every official audit of the past 10 years. The defence department's finances, based on an accounting system inaccurate for anything larger than a grocery store, are so inadequate, in fact, that often it is impossible to know exactly how much is being spent, or on what.
This is on top of misleading information: in January 2007 the administration estimated that the much-vaunted surge would cost $5.6bn. But this was only for combat troops, for four months - they didn't mention the 15,000-28,000 support troops who would also have to be paid for. Neither do official numbers count the cost of death payments, or caring for the wounded - even though the current ratio of wounded to dead, seven to one, is the highest in US history. Again, the Department of Defence is being secretive and misleading: official casualty records list only those wounded in combat. There is, note Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book, "a separate, hard-to-find tally of troops wounded during 'non-combat' operations" - helicopter crashes, training accidents, anyone who succumbs to disease (two-thirds of medical evacuees are victims of disease); those who aren't airlifted, ie are treated on the battlefield, simply aren't included. Stiglitz and Bilmes found this partial list accidentally; veterans' organisations had to use the Freedom of Information Act in order to get full figures (at which point the ratio of injuries to fatalities rises to 15 to one). The Department of Veterans Affairs, responsible for caring for these wounded, was operating, for the first few years of the war, on prewar budgets, and is ruinously overstretched; it is still clearing a backlog of claims from the Vietnam war. Many veterans have been forced to look for private care; even when the government pays for treatment and benefits, the burden of proof for eligibility is on the soldier, not on the government. The figure of $3 trillion includes what it will cost to pay death benefits, and to care for some of the worst-injured soldiers that army surgeons have ever seen, for the next 50 years.
By way of context, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what even one of these trillions could have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century. America, says Stiglitz, is currently spending $5bn a year in Africa, and worrying about being outflanked by China there: "Five billion is roughly 10 days' fighting, so you get a new metric of thinking about everything."
I ask what discoveries Stiglitz found the most disturbing. He laughs, somewhat mirthlessly. "There were actually so many things - some of it we suspected, but there were a few things I couldn't believe." The fact that a contractor working as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, for example, as opposed to a soldier, who might get about $40,000. That there is a discrepancy we might have guessed - but not its sheer scale, or the fact that, because it is so hard to get insurance for working in Iraq, the government pays the premiums; or the fact that, if these contractors are injured or killed, the government pays both death and injury benefits on top. Understandably, this has forced a rise in sign-up bonuses (as has the fact that the army is so desperate for recruits that it is signing up convicted felons). "So we create a competition for ourselves. Nobody in their right mind would have done that. The Bush administration did that ... that I couldn't believe. And that's not included in the cost the government talks about."
Then there was the discovery that sign-up bonuses come with conditions: a soldier injured in the first month, for example, has to pay it back. Or the fact that "the troops, for understandable reasons, are made responsible for their equipment. You lose your helmet, you have to pay. If you get blown up and you lose your helmet, they still bill you." One soldier was sued for $12,000 even though he had suffered massive brain damage. Some families have had to buy their children body armour, saving the government costs in the short term; those too poor to afford it sustain injuries that the government then has to pay for. Then there's the fact that it was not until 2006, when Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defence, that the DOD agreed to replace Humvees with mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armoured vehicles, which are much more able to repel roadside bombs; until that time, IEDs killed 1,500 Americans. "This kind of penny-wise, pound-poor behaviour was just unbelievable."
Yet on another level, Stiglitz is unsurprised, because such decisions are of a piece with the thoroughgoing intellectual inconsistency of the Bush administration. The general approach, he says, has been a "pastiche of corporate bail-outs, corporate welfare, and free-market economics that is not based on any consistent set of ideas. And this particular kind of pastiche actually contributed to the failures in Iraq." There are the well-rehearsed reasons: ignoring international democratic processes while advocating democracy; pushing forward liberalisation before Iraq was ready. Stiglitz's twist on this was the emails he was receiving from the United States Agency for International Development, complaining about the Treasury being obstructive. "They were saying, 'Can you help us? Because we're trying to get businesses to work, but the US Treasury is trying to tighten credit, so there's no money in this country.' "
Then, of course, there is the administration's insistence on "sole-source bidding" - awarding vast, multi-year contracts to Halliburton, for example, instead of putting them out to tender. "An academic might say, 'How can you be a free market, yet demand single-source contracting?'" asks Stiglitz now, mildly - but this is not the way the current administration operates. We know quite a lot now about contractors' excesses, but it is their economic effect that Stiglitz and Bilmes are interested in, and this seems often to have been malign. Free market ideals had, of course, to apply to Iraq, if not to Halliburton (which received at least $19.3bn in single-source contracts), so Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, abolished many tariffs on imports, and capped corporate and income tax. Predictably, this led to general asset-stripping, and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition - meaning that many closed down, putting yet more people out of work. ("The benefits of privatisation and free markets in transition economies are debatable, of course," write Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book; a model of understatement, given that Stiglitz is famous for spelling out the harm sustained by poor countries in his book Globalisation and its Discontents (2002), and lost his job at the World Bank for outspokenly making the argument in the first place.) Many reconstruction jobs, in alignment with US procurement law, went to expensive American firms rather than cheaper Iraqi ones - a further waste of resources (one painting job, for example, cost $25m instead of $5m); these American firms, looking to keep their own costs down and profit margins high, imported cheap labour from such countries as Nepal - even though, at this point, one in two Iraqi men was out of work.
This is not, then, pure neocon ideology at work, says Stiglitz: "Ideology of convenience is a better description." It is an ideology illustrated even more clearly in another fact that Stiglitz can't believe - that Bush put through tax cuts while going to war. In Stiglitz and Bilmes's reading, this was downright underhand. Raising taxes, and resorting to the rhetoric of shared sacrifice used in the world wars, for example, would have made Americans more aware of exactly what the war was costing them, and would have provoked opposition sooner. The solution was to borrow the money, at interest of couple of hundred billion dollars a year, which, by 2017, will add up to another trillion dollars or so. This government will be gone in nine months; subsequent administrations, and generations, will have to pay it off.
At the same time, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, the Federal Reserve colluded in this obfuscation, because it "kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been, and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered, thereby encouraging households to borrow more - and spend more." Alan Greenspan, by this account, encouraged people to take on variable-rate mortgages, even as household savings rates went negative for the first time since the Depression. Individuals were taking on unprecedented debt at the same time as a long housing bubble made them feel wealthy (and less concerned with derring-do abroad) - a scenario echoed on this side of the Atlantic.
As we now know, this couldn't continue - in part because of yet another effect of the war. Whatever the much argued reasons for bombing Baghdad, cheap oil has not been the result. In fact, the price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 in the past five years - great for oil companies, and oil-producing countries, who, along with the contractors, are the only beneficiaries of this war, but not for anyone else. After calculations based on futures markets, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude that a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the disruptions and instabilities caused by Iraq. This price rise alone has cost the US, which imports about 5bn barrels a year, an extra $25bn per year; projecting to 2015 brings that number to an extra $1.6 trillion on oil alone (against which the recent $125bn stimulus package is simply, as Stiglitz puts it, "a drop in the bucket").
Higher oil prices have a direct effect on family, city and state budgets; they also led to a drop in GDP for the US. When interest rates finally rose in response, hundreds of thousands of home owners found that they were unable to keep up payments, triggering the toxic tsunami of defaulted mortgages that has put the US on the brink of recession and brought down Northern Rock - with all the ramifications for British home owners and banks that that has in turn entailed.
Thus, any idea that war is good for the economy, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, is a myth. A persuasive myth, of course, and in specific cases, such as world war two, one that has seemed to be true - but in 1939, America and Europe were in a depression; there was all sorts of possible supply in the market, but people didn't have the cash to buy anything. Making armaments meant jobs, more people with more disposable income, and so on - but peacetime western economies these days operate near full employment. As Stiglitz and Bilmes put it, "Money spent on armaments is money poured down the drain"; far better to invest in education, infrastructure, research, health, and reap the rewards in the long term. But any idea that war can be divorced from the economy is also naive. "A lot of people didn't expect the economy to take over the war as the major issue [in the American election]," says Stiglitz, "because people did not expect the economy to be as weak as it is. I sort of did. So one of the points of this book is that we don't have two issues in this campaign - we have one issue. Or at least, the two are very, very closely linked together."
And it is the world economy that is at stake, not just America's. The trillions the rest of the world has shouldered include, of course, the smashed Iraqi economy, the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, the price, to neighbouring countries, of absorbing thousands of refugees, the coalition dead and wounded (before the war Gordon Brown set aside £1bn; as of late 2007, direct operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan were £7bn and rising). But the rising price of oil has also meant, accoring to Stiglitz and Bilmes, that the cost to oil-importing industrial countries in Europe and the Far East is now about $1.1 trillion. And to developing countries it has been devastating: they note a study by the International Energy Agency that looked at a sample of 13 African countries and found that rising oil prices have "had the effect of lowering the average income by 3% - more than offsetting all of the increase in foreign aid that they had received in recent years, and setting the stage for another crisis in these countries". Stiglitz made his name by, among other things, criticising America's use of globalisation as a bully pulpit; now he says flatly, "Yes, that's part of being in a global economy. You make a mistake of this order, and it affects people all over the world."
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because "the saving rate [in America] is zero," says Stiglitz, "that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America's war." The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn't have the money to bail out its own banks. "When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank." This creates a precedent of dependence, "and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves - it's that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan - that has all changed the US's economic position in the world."
So quite apart from the war, does he think a particular kind of unfettered market has had its day? "Yes. I think that anybody who believes that the banks know what they're doing has to have their head examined. Clearly, unfettered markets have led us to this economic downturn, and to enormous social problems." Combined with the war, whoever inherits the White House faces a crisis of epic proportions. Where do they go from here? "The way that shapes the debate," says Stiglitz, "is that Americans have to say, 'Even if we stay for another two years, just two years, and we're spending $12bn a month up front in Iraq, and it's costing us another 50% in healthcare, disability, bringing it up to $18bn a month in Iraq, and you look at that in another 24 months, we're talking about half a trillion dollars more for two years - forgetting about the economic cost, the ancillary costs, the social costs - just looking at the budgetary cost - not including the interest - you have to say, is this the way we want to spend a half a trillion dollars? Will it make America stronger? Will it make the Middle East safer? Is this the way we want to spend it?"
Far better, he suggests, to leave rapidly and in a dignified manner, and to spend some of it on helping Iraqis reconstruct their own country - and the rest on investing in and strengthening the American economy, so that it can retain its independence, and have the wherewithal, at least, to play a responsible role in the world. The book ends with a list of 18 specific reforms arising from Stiglitz and Bilmes's discoveries, focusing on exactly how to fund and run a war from now on (depend not on emergency funds and borrowing but on surtaxes, for example, so that voters know exactly what it is they are paying for, and can vote accordingly). He has been approached by Barack Obama as a possible adviser should he reach the White House, although he says, "I've gone beyond the age where I would want to be in Washington full time. I would be interested in trying to help shape the bigger picture issues, and in particular the issues associated with America positioning itself in the new global world, and re-establishing the bonds with other countries that have been so damaged by the Bush administration."
I suggest, as devil's advocate, that to count costs in the way he has, and to advise retrenchment, might be seen as encouraging America to return to isolationism. "No. I think that's fundamentally wrong. The problem with Iraq was that it was the wrong war, and the wrong set of issues. Obama was very good about this. He said, 'I'm not against war - I'm just against stupid wars.' And I feel very much the same way. While we were worried about WMD that did not exist in Iraq, WMD did occur in North Korea. To use an American expression, we took our eye off the ball. And while we were fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan got worse, Pakistan got worse. So because we were fighting battles that we couldn't win, we lost battles that we could have." To discover that those lost battles included better healthcare for millions of Americans, a robust world economy, a healthier and more independent Africa, and a more stable Middle East, seems worth a bit of green-eye-shaded number crunching.
In figures
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
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2005年起，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者 约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨（Joseph Stiglitz）开始了计算伊拉克战争的艰难过程。在他与琳达•比尔姆斯合作的新书(《三兆美元的战争：伊拉克冲突的真实代价》The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Norton, 2008. 一兆=一万亿)中，他展示了急功近利的预算决策，后果发生后的遮遮掩掩，以及一场非正义的战争将怎样在将来的年代中继续影响我们所有人。阿依达•爱德马里安（Aida Edemariam）与约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨，进行了一次会谈。
春日时断时续的阳光温暖着新哥特风格伦敦国会大厦的石灰岩建筑，成群结队的观光客在四周游逛，但米尔班克的地下咖啡馆幽暗僻静，约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨看来有些睡眼惺忪。两天来，他一直在发表言论：在伦敦经济学院(LSE)、在恰谈出版社(Chatham House)、对着数个电视摄制组――他马上还要飞回华盛顿，在国会面前阐述他的新书《三兆美元的战争》。不管议员们心存怎样的芥蒂——必定会有一些——他们将不得不倾听，因为斯蒂格利茨的权威地位与一般的作者不可同日而语。作为一位诺贝尔经济学奖得主，一名在比尔•克林顿的总统经济顾问委员会经历了四年的磨砺，又在世界银行担任了三年首席经济学家的学者（在此期间他对全球化发起了一场影响深远的批判），斯蒂格利茨能够写出一本真切地改变人们对眼下这场战争视角的书。《三兆美元的战争》揭示所有的人已经并将感受到怎样源自战争的影响，不管是华尔街还是英国繁华商业街、不管是伊拉克平民还是非洲小商人，没有人能在将来漫长的时间中，逃脱战争的影响。
2005年的某一天，斯蒂格利茨和同样曾任克林顿经济顾问的琳达•比尔姆斯（Linda Bilmes）注意到，国会预算办公室对迄今为止的战争投入作出的官方估计大约是5000亿美元。这个数字太低了，他们根本无法相信，决定展开一次调查。他们合著的论文于2006年1月发表，文章对这个数字作出了幅度惊人的修正——应该是1万亿到2万亿美元之间。根据斯蒂格利茨现在的说法，即便这个数字他们也已经有意做了一些保留："我们不想让人觉得太不可思议。"
共和党人怎么说呢？斯蒂格利茨疲倦地说道：“他们的反应不外乎两种。第一：布什总统的答复是，‘我们的战争不是由那些吹毛求疵(green eye shaded)的会计师或者经济学家的计算决定的。’我们的回应是，‘对，珍珠港事件时你也不是根据这些计算来决策，但当你面对一场有选择的战争，至少应该用这些计算来证明你的时机是恰当的，你的准备是充分的。你必须通过计算来判断是否存在更有效地达到目的的其他方式。第二种批评——这一点我们是承认的——就是我们只考虑了代价，忽略了收益。可是，我们看不到任何收益。在我们看来，我们不知道这场战争到底有什么好处。”
探究锋芒既露，斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯继续了他们的探索。对一些往往被有意隐藏的帐户进行为期数月的跟踪调查后，他们发现布什的伊拉克大冒险保守估计将花去美国——仅仅是美国——3万亿美元。其它国家，包括英国，加在一起可能将花费差不多相同的数目。随着调查的进行，他们取得的成就远不只是得出一个难以置信的数字：通过详述流程、制作开销细目、严谨地罗列出那些目光短浅的预算决策所造成的后果，他们描绘出了一幅充斥着欺瞒和不诚信的图景，驱动着这些欺瞒和不诚信的力量显然都来自最根源处。他们的发现，有一些是我们之前已经听说过，有一些我们曾经怀疑过，还有一些则是闻所未闻——将这些发现一起放在情境中，它们的冲击力是惊人的。没有几个人不会觉得——无论发动战争的动机是什么，它的发展过程在道义上是令人担忧的；要想探究其原因，追踪资金的来龙去脉是一个绝佳的方法。
下个月，美军在伊拉克的战争就是五周年了——这比美国参与2次世界大战的时间都长。每天的军事开销（不包括将来的伤员救治等方面）已经比在越南12年消耗总和还要多，是朝鲜战争的两倍。美国每月在伊拉克和阿富汗要耗费160亿美元，这些仅仅是用于维持运转的开支（也就是说不包括国防部的常规开销）；这相当于联合国整整一年的预算。大量的现金消失了——例如媒体广泛报道的联盟驻伊拉克临时管理当局那笔88亿美元的伊拉克发展基金；还有较少见诸报端的，消失在国防部的种种漏洞之间的几百万美元——这个部门在过去十年间没有一次能通过财会审核。一旦规模超过一家杂货铺的大小，国防部的会计制度就无法保证统计的准确性了。基于这样的制度进行的财务管理缺陷实在太大，事实上很多时候根本不知道究竟花了多少钱，或者花在了什么地方。
最严重的一条误导性信息是：2007年1月，政府宣布他们大肆鼓吹的"大增兵"行动将耗资56亿美元。但这只是作战部队四个月的开销——还有15000～28000名后勤部队官兵等着开饷，这一点他们没有提。同时，这组官方数据也没有计入阵亡抚恤或者伤员救治费用，尽管当前7：1的伤员与死亡人数亡比已经是美国历史上的最高。再一次地，国防部选择了保密和误导：官方伤亡记录只列出了战斗减员。斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯在书中指出，针对那些"非战斗行动"伤亡——直升机坠毁、训练事故以及所有死于疾病的人（医疗撤运的人员中有三分之二是因为疾病）——是有一项专门的、难以被察觉的统计的；那些没有经过空运的伤员，也就是说在战场上实施治疗的，则完全被排除在外了。斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯碰巧发现了一份不完整的清单；为了获得完整的数据统计，退伍军人机构不得不搬出《信息自由法案》（当这些数据被计入后，伤员与死亡比就上升到15：1）。负责帮助负伤人员的退伍军人事务部在战争初期是根据战前预算工作的，因此他们的超支程度已是灾难性的；至今他们还需要解决越南战争的大量遗留问题。许多退伍军人被迫寻求私立医疗救治；即便政府承担了治疗和补助的费用，适格性的举证责任也在士兵一方，而不是在政府。三兆美元包括了阵亡抚恤，以及在今后50年里医治那些伤势严重程度是军队外科医生们前所未见的军人。
通过设置不同的情境，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯例举出从这几兆美元中拿出哪怕一兆能做什么：800万套住房单元，或者1500万名公立学校教师，或为5.3亿儿童提供一年的健康保健，或为4300万学生提供上大学的奖学金。三兆美元本可以解决美国半个世纪的社会保障问题。美国目前每年在非洲花费50亿美元，并且正在担心在那里会败给中国的力量。"50亿美元大概够打10天的仗，"斯蒂格利茨说，"这样的数字会改变你对一切事物的判断尺度。"
我问斯蒂格利茨，他的发现中哪个是最让他不安的。他笑了，笑得几乎没有快意。"事实上有很多——有些我们是持怀疑态度的，但有些我根本无法相信。"比如说一个工作是保安的签约工作者一年可以拿到40万美元，与之相对的，一名士兵一年能拿到4万。我们能够想到会有差距，但没想到差距如此巨大；还有，由于在伊拉克工作的人很难得到保险，所以保险费是由政府支付的；还有，如果这些承包商/签约工作者负伤或者被杀了，政府还会根据最高标准支付死亡和伤害补偿金。
可以想见，这将迫使军队提高入伍附加奖励的标准（事实上军队招募新兵的心情是如此的迫切，以至于他们连被判有罪的重罪犯人都收）。"我们就这样开始了一场自己和自己的竞赛。任何一个脑子正常的人都不会这么做，布什政府这样做了……因此我无法相信。而这些附加奖励也不包括在政府所说的开销里。"
接着他们发现入伍附加奖励是有条件的：例如士兵如果在第一个月负伤，就得退还奖励；还有，"出于显而易见的原因，士兵要对他们的装备负责。如果弄丢了头盔，你需要赔偿。如果你已被炸飞，头盔也不见了，他们依然会给你寄账单。” 一个遭受了严重的脑损伤的士兵依然被索款12000美元。一些家属不得不掏钱给他们的孩子买防弹衣，以便在短期内节省政府开支；那些无力支付的人则容易受伤，最终还是由政府来出更多的钱。还有一个情况，直到2006年罗伯特•盖茨取代唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德担任国防部长，国防部才同意用装配了防地雷伏击装甲（MRAP）的车辆取代悍马，前者抵御路边炸弹的能力要强得多；截至当时，简易爆炸装置（IED）已经导致1500名美国人丧生。"这种贪小便宜吃大亏的举动实在让人难以置信。"
然而从另一个层面看，斯蒂格利茨并不感到意外，因为这样的决策是在理性上完全捉摸不定的布什政府的一贯作风。他说，布什政府的大体行为方式就是一锅“混合了公司危机救市、公司福利、没有任何可靠的思想体系基础的自由市场经济的大杂烩。这种古怪的大杂烩其实促成了在伊拉克的失败。”有一些原因已经被反复提及了：在鼓吹民主的同时无视国际民主进程；在伊拉克尚未做好准备的情况下推行自由主义。斯蒂格利茨在这个问题上借助了美国国际开发署寄给他的一封电子邮件，邮件中抱怨财政部阻碍他们的工作。"他们说，'你能帮帮我们吗？因为我们在努力推动商业运营，但美国财政部在紧缩信贷，所以现在这个国家没有钱了。"
然后当然还有政府坚决推行的"单一供应商投标"：例如把巨额长期合同交给哈利伯顿公司，而不是通过投标决定。斯蒂格利茨委婉地质疑道："一个学者也许会说，'自由市场怎么能要求单一供应商合同呢？'"——但当前政府并不是这样运转的。承包商的放肆牟利我们已经很了解了，但斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯关心的是这些行为的经济影响，这种影响目前看来是恶性的。当然，自由市场的理想必须用来规范伊拉克，而不是哈利伯顿（该公司在单一供应商合同中得到了至少193亿美元的）。所以保罗•布雷默（Paul Bremer），联盟驻伊拉克临时管理当局的头，废除了许多进口关税，并为企业税和所得税制定了上限。可想而知，这导致了普遍的资产剥离，把伊拉克的企业暴露在自由竞争之中——这意味着许多公司倒闭了，造成更多的人失业。（斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯在书中写道：“在转型经济中，私有化和自由市场能起到多大帮助当然是存在疑问的。”这句话是婉辞的典范。因为斯蒂格利茨以在2002年的《全球化和它的不满》一书中陈述穷国所承受的伤害而著称，而且由于他的这个观点，他失去了在世界银行的职位。）依据美国的采购法，许多重建工作落在了昂贵的美国公司手中，而不是更廉价的伊拉克公司——这是进一步的资源浪费（例如一个油漆刷涂工程花费了2500万而不是500万）；这些美国公司为了降低他们的固有成本以获取更高利润，从尼泊尔等国输入廉价劳工——尽管现在每两个伊拉克人就有一个失业。
那么，这一切遵循的不是纯粹的新保守主义思想，斯蒂格利茨说："更贴切地说法是方便主义意识形态。"最能说明这是一种怎样的意识形态的，是另一个让斯蒂格利茨无法相信的事实——布什在进行战争的同时推行减税政策。在斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯看来，这完全是一记阴招。提高税收，并且像世界大战时那样找一套共同奉献的说辞，会让美国人意识到他们要为战争付出怎样的代价，会导致抵触情绪更早地滋生。解决办法是借贷——每年的利息达数千亿，到2017年债务将总计一兆美元左右。这一届政府9个月后就下台了；后继的几代政府和几代人将要为此买单。
与此同时，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯指出，联储也是迷惑大众的帮凶，因为它"把利率降得比原本的还要低，罔顾贷款标准的放宽，从而刺激美国家庭去借更多的钱——同时也花更多的钱。"在这个问题上，阿兰•格林斯潘鼓励人们去申请可变利率抵押贷款，尽管此时的居民储蓄率已经是自大萧条以来首次出现负值。个人承担着前所未有的债务，与此同时长期的房地产泡沫又让他们觉得自己很富有（并且对那些海外冒险减少了关注）——此番景象自然也波及到了大西洋的这一边（指欧洲）。
我们现在知道，不能再这样继续下去——战争产生的另一个影响也是原因之一。不管轰炸巴格达的那个饱受争议的理由到底是什么，廉价石油至少不是答案。事实上油价在过去5年间已经从每桶25美元蹿升至100美元——对石油公司和产油国是件大好事，它们连同承包商们是这场战争的唯一受益者，其他人都不是。经过对未来市场的估计，斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯推断，伊拉克的分裂和不稳定是导致这种大幅度增长的直接原因。每年会进口大约50亿桶原油的美国，仅因为这项价格的增长，每年就要额外支付250亿美元；预计到2015年仅就石油这一项，这个数字将增至每年1.6兆美元（相比之下，最近推出的1250亿美元的经济促进计划用斯蒂格利茨的话说只是'杯水车薪'）。
高油价对家庭、城市和国家的预算造成了直接影响；同时还导致美国的GDP下降。当利率终于做出相应的上调时，数十万业主发现他们无力偿还债务，引发了一场致命的还贷拖欠的海啸，把美国推向经济衰退的边缘，也把诺森罗克银行拖向了深渊——同时，这一切也对英国的购房者和银行间接造成了影响。
由此斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯指出，任何战争有益经济的想法都是迷思。当然，这种迷思很有说服力，在某些特定的情境中，例如第二次世界大战，这种说法看上去是正确的——但在1939年，美国和欧洲正处在萧条期；市场有充分的供给，但人民没有足够的钱去购买。军备生产意味着就业机会，更多的人有了更多可支配的收入等等——但当前和平时期的西方经济在就业几乎饱和的情况下运转。正如斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯所说："钱花在军备上就等于打了水漂"；投资在教育、基础建设、科研、卫生保健上以求长远回报要好得多。但是，任何试图把战争和经济剥离开的想法也是幼稚的。斯蒂格利茨说："许多人没想到经济会超越战争成为（美国大选）的关键议题，因为人们没想到经济会如此的脆弱。某种程度上说我也是这样。所以这本书的观点之一就是，在这次竞选中我们不存在两个议题——我们只有一个议题，至少说，是两个联系极其紧密的议题。
被推向悬崖边的并非只是美国，而是整个世界经济。当然，压在其它国家肩上的万亿重担包括：被摧毁的伊拉克经济，数以万计的伊拉克人死去，对邻国来说还有吸收上千难民的代价，联军的伤亡（戈登•布朗在战前准备了10亿英镑；截至2007年末，伊拉克和阿富汗的直接运转成本是70亿英镑并且仍在增加）。而在斯蒂格利茨和比尔姆斯看来，油价的上涨同样也意味着欧洲和远东的石油进口工业国要支付大约1.1万亿美元。对发展中国家来说这是毁灭性的：他们注意到了国际能源署的一项研究，通过对13个非洲国家的采样他们发现，油价上涨“导致他们的人均收入下降了3%，幅度超过了近年他们所接受外国援助的增长度，这有可能导致这些国家再一次陷入危机。”斯蒂格利茨的著名事迹之一就是批评美国把全球化当成宣传自己权威的讲台；而今他平静地说："是的，身处于全球经济中就是这样。你犯下一个决策错误，全世界人民都会受牵连。"
【以上已完成 10/08】
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because "the saving rate [in America] is zero," says Stiglitz, "that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America's war." The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn't have the money to bail out its own banks. "When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank." This creates a precedent of dependence, "and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves - it's that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan - that has all changed the US's economic position in the world."
当然，借贷的几万亿美元总得有来源。按斯蒂格利茨的说法，"（美国）的储蓄利率为零，这意味着（战争的）资金必须从国外募集。所以，资助美国的战争的是中国。"事实上美国目前的严重赤字致使它连自己的银行都保不住。"当美林集团和花旗银行遇到困难的时候，帮助他们脱困的是国外的主权基金。我们必须放弃许多的所有权份额。现在的花旗银行的头号股东是中东。它应该叫中东银行，而不是花旗银行。"这开创了一个依附的先例，"不论我们是在依赖中东石油资金还是中国的储备金——这种依赖性才是我们应该担忧的。这个巨大的变化——过去8年的借贷已经超过了自里根政府以来的借贷总和——已经改变了美国在世界经济中的地位。
So quite apart from the war, does he think a particular kind of unfettered market has had its day? "Yes. I think that anybody who believes that the banks know what they're doing has to have their head examined. Clearly, unfettered markets have led us to this economic downturn, and to enormous social problems." Combined with the war, whoever inherits the White House faces a crisis of epic proportions. Where do they go from here? "The way that shapes the debate," says Stiglitz, "is that Americans have to say, 'Even if we stay for another two years, just two years, and we're spending $12bn a month up front in Iraq, and it's costing us another 50% in healthcare, disability, bringing it up to $18bn a month in Iraq, and you look at that in another 24 months, we're talking about half a trillion dollars more for two years - forgetting about the economic cost, the ancillary costs, the social costs - just looking at the budgetary cost - not including the interest - you have to say, is this the way we want to spend a half a trillion dollars? Will it make America stronger? Will it make the Middle East safer? Is this the way we want to spend it?"
那么除了战争，他是否认为一个古怪的无规则市场正走上舞台？"是的。我认为要是有谁还相信银行知道自己在做什么，那他就该去检查一下脑子。很显然，这个无规则市场引发了我们的经济倒退以及大量社会问题。"再加上战争，无论谁接手白宫都将面临一场前所未有的巨大危机。他们应该怎么办？"辩论应该围绕着这样一个问题，"斯蒂格利茨说，"美国人应该自问，'即便我们再待两年，只是两年时间，我们在伊拉克每个月要花去120亿美元，健康和伤残保障需要再花50%，这样就增加到了180亿。过24个月再看，那就是两年超过5000亿的投入——把经济成本、附加成本和社会成本暂时抛在一边吧——只要看看预算成本——不包括利息——你会说，5000亿美元应该就这样花掉吗？这样能让美国更强大吗？这样能让中东更安全吗？这是我们想要的投入方式吗？"
Far better, he suggests, to leave rapidly and in a dignified manner, and to spend some of it on helping Iraqis reconstruct their own country - and the rest on investing in and strengthening the American economy, so that it can retain its independence, and have the wherewithal, at least, to play a responsible role in the world. The book ends with a list of 18 specific reforms arising from Stiglitz and Bilmes's discoveries, focusing on exactly how to fund and run a war from now on (depend not on emergency funds and borrowing but on surtaxes, for example, so that voters know exactly what it is they are paying for, and can vote accordingly). He has been approached by Barack Obama as a possible adviser should he reach the White House, although he says, "I've gone beyond the age where I would want to be in Washington full time. I would be interested in trying to help shape the bigger picture issues, and in particular the issues associated with America positioning itself in the new global world, and re-establishing the bonds with other countries that have been so damaged by the Bush administration."
I suggest, as devil's advocate, that to count costs in the way he has, and to advise retrenchment, might be seen as encouraging America to return to isolationism. "No. I think that's fundamentally wrong. The problem with Iraq was that it was the wrong war, and the wrong set of issues. Obama was very good about this. He said, 'I'm not against war - I'm just against stupid wars.' And I feel very much the same way. While we were worried about WMD that did not exist in Iraq, WMD did occur in North Korea. To use an American expression, we took our eye off the ball. And while we were fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan got worse, Pakistan got worse. So because we were fighting battles that we couldn't win, we lost battles that we could have." To discover that those lost battles included better healthcare for millions of Americans, a robust world economy, a healthier and more independent Africa, and a more stable Middle East, seems worth a bit of green-eye-shaded number crunching.
他建议尽可能迅速地、有尊严地离开，这样要好的多。把一部分钱用在帮助伊拉克人重建他们的国家——其它的用于注资和巩固美国经济，从而保持它的独立性。同时，至少保留一笔资金用于支持美国在世界各地发挥应有的作用。书的末尾处列出了斯蒂格利茨和比尔梅斯研究得出的18个具体的改革方案，着眼于从今往后该如何进行战争，如何筹措资金（例如通过附加税的形式，而不是通过应急基金和借贷，这样选民就能够知道他们的钱到底用在了什么地方，并据此进行投票）。巴拉克•奥巴马已经试图邀请他担任顾问，也许即将前往白宫供职，尽管他说："我已经过了全职待在华盛顿的年纪了。我对参与大环境的塑造更感兴趣，尤其是事关美国在这个全新世界中的地位，以及重新建立与其它国家的联系的问题——这些联系在布什政府治下遭到了破坏。"
本着针锋相对的立场，我提出如果按照他的方式计算成本，并建议紧缩开支，那似乎会让美国重新回到孤立主义。"不。我认为这从根本上是错误的。伊拉克的问题在于这是一场错误的战争，一系列错误的问题。奥巴马很清楚这一点。他说，'我不反对战争——我只是反对愚蠢的战争。'我也有同感。当我们为了伊拉克那些不存在的大规模杀伤性武器忧心忡忡时，朝鲜真的出现了大规模杀伤性武器。用美国人的话说，我们的眼睛没盯住球。伊拉克一开战，阿富汗的情况就开始恶化，巴基斯坦就开始恶化。所以，由于我们在打一场不可能获胜的战争，一些本该获胜的战役我们就输了。"当我们发现，我们输掉的包括为数百万美国人提供更好的健康保障，一个富有活力的世界经济，一个更健康更独立的非洲，一个更稳定的中东，那么让那些吹毛求疵的家伙们多做几道算术题似乎还是值得的。
重要数字
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
The true cost of war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan
In 2005, a Nobel prize-winning economist began the painstaking process of calculating the true cost of the Iraq war. In his new book, he reveals how short-sighted budget decisions, cover-ups and a war fought in bad faith will affect us all for decades to come. Aida Edemariam meets Joseph Stiglitz
Fitful spring sunshine is warming the neo-gothic limestone of the Houses of Parliament, and the knots of tourists wandering round them, but in a basement cafe on Millbank it is dark, and quiet, and Joseph Stiglitz is looking as though he hasn't had quite enough sleep. For two days non-stop he has been talking - at the LSE, at Chatham House, to television crews - and then he is flying to Washington to testify before Congress on the subject of his new book. Whatever their reservations - and there will be a few - representatives will have to listen, because not many authors with the authority of Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, an academic tempered by four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank (during which time he developed an influential critique of globalisation), will have written a book that so urgently redefines the terms in which to view an ongoing conflict. The Three Trillion Dollar War reveals the extent to which its effects have been, and will be, felt by everyone, from Wall Street to the British high street, from Iraqi civilians to African small traders, for years to come.
Some time in 2005, Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, who also served as an economic adviser under Clinton, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion. Even that, Stiglitz says now, was deliberately conservative: "We didn't want to sound outlandish."
So what did the Republicans say? "They had two reactions," Stiglitz says wearily. "One was Bush saying, 'We don't go to war on the calculations of green eye-shaded accountants or economists.' And our response was, 'No, you don't decide to fight a response to Pearl Harbour on the basis of that, but when there's a war of choice, you at least use it to make sure your timing is right, that you've done the preparation. And you really ought to do the calculations to see if there are alternative ways that are more effective at getting your objectives. The second criticism - which we admit - was that we only look at the costs, not the benefits. Now, we couldn't see any benefits. From our point of view we weren't sure what those were."
Appetites whetted, Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, is that in fact Bush's Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. And in doing so they have achieved something much greater than arriving at an unimaginable figure: by describing the process, by detailing individual costs, by soberly listing the consequences of short-sighted budget decisions, they have produced a picture of comprehensive obfuscation and bad faith whose power comes from its roots in bald fact. Some of their discoveries we have heard before, others we may have had a hunch about, but others are completely new - and together, placed in context, their impact is staggering. There will be few who do not think that whatever the reasons for going to war, its progression has been morally disquieting; following the money turns out to be a brilliant way of getting at exactly why that is.
Next month America will have been in Iraq for five years - longer than it spent in either world war. Daily military operations (not counting, for example, future care of wounded) have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam, and twice as much as the Korean war. America is spending $16bn a month on running costs alone (ie on top of the regular expenses of the Department of Defence) in Iraq and Afghanistan; that is the entire annual budget of the UN. Large amounts of cash go missing - the well-publicised $8.8bn Development Fund for Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, for example; and the less-publicised millions that fall between the cracks at the Department of Defence, which has failed every official audit of the past 10 years. The defence department's finances, based on an accounting system inaccurate for anything larger than a grocery store, are so inadequate, in fact, that often it is impossible to know exactly how much is being spent, or on what.
This is on top of misleading information: in January 2007 the administration estimated that the much-vaunted surge would cost $5.6bn. But this was only for combat troops, for four months - they didn't mention the 15,000-28,000 support troops who would also have to be paid for. Neither do official numbers count the cost of death payments, or caring for the wounded - even though the current ratio of wounded to dead, seven to one, is the highest in US history. Again, the Department of Defence is being secretive and misleading: official casualty records list only those wounded in combat. There is, note Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book, "a separate, hard-to-find tally of troops wounded during 'non-combat' operations" - helicopter crashes, training accidents, anyone who succumbs to disease (two-thirds of medical evacuees are victims of disease); those who aren't airlifted, ie are treated on the battlefield, simply aren't included. Stiglitz and Bilmes found this partial list accidentally; veterans' organisations had to use the Freedom of Information Act in order to get full figures (at which point the ratio of injuries to fatalities rises to 15 to one). The Department of Veterans Affairs, responsible for caring for these wounded, was operating, for the first few years of the war, on prewar budgets, and is ruinously overstretched; it is still clearing a backlog of claims from the Vietnam war. Many veterans have been forced to look for private care; even when the government pays for treatment and benefits, the burden of proof for eligibility is on the soldier, not on the government. The figure of $3 trillion includes what it will cost to pay death benefits, and to care for some of the worst-injured soldiers that army surgeons have ever seen, for the next 50 years.
By way of context, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what even one of these trillions could have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century. America, says Stiglitz, is currently spending $5bn a year in Africa, and worrying about being outflanked by China there: "Five billion is roughly 10 days' fighting, so you get a new metric of thinking about everything."
I ask what discoveries Stiglitz found the most disturbing. He laughs, somewhat mirthlessly. "There were actually so many things - some of it we suspected, but there were a few things I couldn't believe." The fact that a contractor working as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, for example, as opposed to a soldier, who might get about $40,000. That there is a discrepancy we might have guessed - but not its sheer scale, or the fact that, because it is so hard to get insurance for working in Iraq, the government pays the premiums; or the fact that, if these contractors are injured or killed, the government pays both death and injury benefits on top. Understandably, this has forced a rise in sign-up bonuses (as has the fact that the army is so desperate for recruits that it is signing up convicted felons). "So we create a competition for ourselves. Nobody in their right mind would have done that. The Bush administration did that ... that I couldn't believe. And that's not included in the cost the government talks about."
Then there was the discovery that sign-up bonuses come with conditions: a soldier injured in the first month, for example, has to pay it back. Or the fact that "the troops, for understandable reasons, are made responsible for their equipment. You lose your helmet, you have to pay. If you get blown up and you lose your helmet, they still bill you." One soldier was sued for $12,000 even though he had suffered massive brain damage. Some families have had to buy their children body armour, saving the government costs in the short term; those too poor to afford it sustain injuries that the government then has to pay for. Then there's the fact that it was not until 2006, when Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defence, that the DOD agreed to replace Humvees with mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armoured vehicles, which are much more able to repel roadside bombs; until that time, IEDs killed 1,500 Americans. "This kind of penny-wise, pound-poor behaviour was just unbelievable."
Yet on another level, Stiglitz is unsurprised, because such decisions are of a piece with the thoroughgoing intellectual inconsistency of the Bush administration. The general approach, he says, has been a "pastiche of corporate bail-outs, corporate welfare, and free-market economics that is not based on any consistent set of ideas. And this particular kind of pastiche actually contributed to the failures in Iraq." There are the well-rehearsed reasons: ignoring international democratic processes while advocating democracy; pushing forward liberalisation before Iraq was ready. Stiglitz's twist on this was the emails he was receiving from the United States Agency for International Development, complaining about the Treasury being obstructive. "They were saying, 'Can you help us? Because we're trying to get businesses to work, but the US Treasury is trying to tighten credit, so there's no money in this country.' "
Then, of course, there is the administration's insistence on "sole-source bidding" - awarding vast, multi-year contracts to Halliburton, for example, instead of putting them out to tender. "An academic might say, 'How can you be a free market, yet demand single-source contracting?'" asks Stiglitz now, mildly - but this is not the way the current administration operates. We know quite a lot now about contractors' excesses, but it is their economic effect that Stiglitz and Bilmes are interested in, and this seems often to have been malign. Free market ideals had, of course, to apply to Iraq, if not to Halliburton (which received at least $19.3bn in single-source contracts), so Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, abolished many tariffs on imports, and capped corporate and income tax. Predictably, this led to general asset-stripping, and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition - meaning that many closed down, putting yet more people out of work. ("The benefits of privatisation and free markets in transition economies are debatable, of course," write Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book; a model of understatement, given that Stiglitz is famous for spelling out the harm sustained by poor countries in his book Globalisation and its Discontents (2002), and lost his job at the World Bank for outspokenly making the argument in the first place.) Many reconstruction jobs, in alignment with US procurement law, went to expensive American firms rather than cheaper Iraqi ones - a further waste of resources (one painting job, for example, cost $25m instead of $5m); these American firms, looking to keep their own costs down and profit margins high, imported cheap labour from such countries as Nepal - even though, at this point, one in two Iraqi men was out of work.
This is not, then, pure neocon ideology at work, says Stiglitz: "Ideology of convenience is a better description." It is an ideology illustrated even more clearly in another fact that Stiglitz can't believe - that Bush put through tax cuts while going to war. In Stiglitz and Bilmes's reading, this was downright underhand. Raising taxes, and resorting to the rhetoric of shared sacrifice used in the world wars, for example, would have made Americans more aware of exactly what the war was costing them, and would have provoked opposition sooner. The solution was to borrow the money, at interest of couple of hundred billion dollars a year, which, by 2017, will add up to another trillion dollars or so. This government will be gone in nine months; subsequent administrations, and generations, will have to pay it off.
At the same time, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, the Federal Reserve colluded in this obfuscation, because it "kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been, and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered, thereby encouraging households to borrow more - and spend more." Alan Greenspan, by this account, encouraged people to take on variable-rate mortgages, even as household savings rates went negative for the first time since the Depression. Individuals were taking on unprecedented debt at the same time as a long housing bubble made them feel wealthy (and less concerned with derring-do abroad) - a scenario echoed on this side of the Atlantic.
As we now know, this couldn't continue - in part because of yet another effect of the war. Whatever the much argued reasons for bombing Baghdad, cheap oil has not been the result. In fact, the price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 in the past five years - great for oil companies, and oil-producing countries, who, along with the contractors, are the only beneficiaries of this war, but not for anyone else. After calculations based on futures markets, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude that a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the disruptions and instabilities caused by Iraq. This price rise alone has cost the US, which imports about 5bn barrels a year, an extra $25bn per year; projecting to 2015 brings that number to an extra $1.6 trillion on oil alone (against which the recent $125bn stimulus package is simply, as Stiglitz puts it, "a drop in the bucket").
Higher oil prices have a direct effect on family, city and state budgets; they also led to a drop in GDP for the US. When interest rates finally rose in response, hundreds of thousands of home owners found that they were unable to keep up payments, triggering the toxic tsunami of defaulted mortgages that has put the US on the brink of recession and brought down Northern Rock - with all the ramifications for British home owners and banks that that has in turn entailed.
Thus, any idea that war is good for the economy, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, is a myth. A persuasive myth, of course, and in specific cases, such as world war two, one that has seemed to be true - but in 1939, America and Europe were in a depression; there was all sorts of possible supply in the market, but people didn't have the cash to buy anything. Making armaments meant jobs, more people with more disposable income, and so on - but peacetime western economies these days operate near full employment. As Stiglitz and Bilmes put it, "Money spent on armaments is money poured down the drain"; far better to invest in education, infrastructure, research, health, and reap the rewards in the long term. But any idea that war can be divorced from the economy is also naive. "A lot of people didn't expect the economy to take over the war as the major issue [in the American election]," says Stiglitz, "because people did not expect the economy to be as weak as it is. I sort of did. So one of the points of this book is that we don't have two issues in this campaign - we have one issue. Or at least, the two are very, very closely linked together."
And it is the world economy that is at stake, not just America's. The trillions the rest of the world has shouldered include, of course, the smashed Iraqi economy, the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, the price, to neighbouring countries, of absorbing thousands of refugees, the coalition dead and wounded (before the war Gordon Brown set aside £1bn; as of late 2007, direct operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan were £7bn and rising). But the rising price of oil has also meant, accoring to Stiglitz and Bilmes, that the cost to oil-importing industrial countries in Europe and the Far East is now about $1.1 trillion. And to developing countries it has been devastating: they note a study by the International Energy Agency that looked at a sample of 13 African countries and found that rising oil prices have "had the effect of lowering the average income by 3% - more than offsetting all of the increase in foreign aid that they had received in recent years, and setting the stage for another crisis in these countries". Stiglitz made his name by, among other things, criticising America's use of globalisation as a bully pulpit; now he says flatly, "Yes, that's part of being in a global economy. You make a mistake of this order, and it affects people all over the world."
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because "the saving rate [in America] is zero," says Stiglitz, "that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America's war." The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn't have the money to bail out its own banks. "When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank." This creates a precedent of dependence, "and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves - it's that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan - that has all changed the US's economic position in the world."
So quite apart from the war, does he think a particular kind of unfettered market has had its day? "Yes. I think that anybody who believes that the banks know what they're doing has to have their head examined. Clearly, unfettered markets have led us to this economic downturn, and to enormous social problems." Combined with the war, whoever inherits the White House faces a crisis of epic proportions. Where do they go from here? "The way that shapes the debate," says Stiglitz, "is that Americans have to say, 'Even if we stay for another two years, just two years, and we're spending $12bn a month up front in Iraq, and it's costing us another 50% in healthcare, disability, bringing it up to $18bn a month in Iraq, and you look at that in another 24 months, we're talking about half a trillion dollars more for two years - forgetting about the economic cost, the ancillary costs, the social costs - just looking at the budgetary cost - not including the interest - you have to say, is this the way we want to spend a half a trillion dollars? Will it make America stronger? Will it make the Middle East safer? Is this the way we want to spend it?"
Far better, he suggests, to leave rapidly and in a dignified manner, and to spend some of it on helping Iraqis reconstruct their own country - and the rest on investing in and strengthening the American economy, so that it can retain its independence, and have the wherewithal, at least, to play a responsible role in the world. The book ends with a list of 18 specific reforms arising from Stiglitz and Bilmes's discoveries, focusing on exactly how to fund and run a war from now on (depend not on emergency funds and borrowing but on surtaxes, for example, so that voters know exactly what it is they are paying for, and can vote accordingly). He has been approached by Barack Obama as a possible adviser should he reach the White House, although he says, "I've gone beyond the age where I would want to be in Washington full time. I would be interested in trying to help shape the bigger picture issues, and in particular the issues associated with America positioning itself in the new global world, and re-establishing the bonds with other countries that have been so damaged by the Bush administration."
I suggest, as devil's advocate, that to count costs in the way he has, and to advise retrenchment, might be seen as encouraging America to return to isolationism. "No. I think that's fundamentally wrong. The problem with Iraq was that it was the wrong war, and the wrong set of issues. Obama was very good about this. He said, 'I'm not against war - I'm just against stupid wars.' And I feel very much the same way. While we were worried about WMD that did not exist in Iraq, WMD did occur in North Korea. To use an American expression, we took our eye off the ball. And while we were fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan got worse, Pakistan got worse. So because we were fighting battles that we couldn't win, we lost battles that we could have." To discover that those lost battles included better healthcare for millions of Americans, a robust world economy, a healthier and more independent Africa, and a more stable Middle East, seems worth a bit of green-eye-shaded number crunching.
In figures
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
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