The Iraq War -- Where Do We Go From Here?

On February 28, 2007, Professor Michael Meeropol participated in a panel at the Storrs Library in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

At that talk, he promised to have lots of material available for those who wished to follow through on some of the material he described. This blog entry will include the text of certain interviews and other writings mentioned in his speech as well as some web links.

I WELCOME COMMENTS THAT CONTINUE A VERY FRUITFUL DISCUSSION THAT WE HAD WEDNESDAY EVENING. (If time permits, I may publish a more detailed version of my comments from Wednesday night sometime in the future.)

WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE TEXT OF A COMMENTARY DELIVERED BY MICHAEL MEEROPOL OVER WAMC RADIO on March 2, 2007:

How much is the Iraq war really costing?

In 2002, before the war began, Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush’s chief Economic Adviser, estimated the total cost at about $200 billion. Budget director Mitch Daniels asserted that this was a gross overestimate.[1] Mr. Lindsey was fired.[2]

In January of 2006, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz joined with Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes to estimate both the direct and indirect costs of the war. Their work shows that Lindsey underestimated the cost.

Stiglitz and Bilmes begin with a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $500 billion for the direct costs of the war over the next decade. But this number doesn’t include some major long run costs. As a result of improvements in battlefield medical care, a much higher percentage of military casualties survive injury than in previous conflicts.[3] Thus, many injured veterans require a lifetime of medical care. Adding up increasing expenditures by the VA, specific expenditures to treat brain-injured veterans, and disability payments to wounded veterans, Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate a $90 billion cost above the $500 billion assuming all troops leave Iraq by 2010 and a $200 billion cost if some remain till 2015. They estimate all direct costs at $800 b. if troops are out by 2010 and over $1 trillion if they stay till 2015.

There are indirect costs as well – costs imposed on the rest of the economy. These are the higher price of oil over the next 5 or 10 years and other effects on economic growth. Estimates range from a low of $187 b. to a high of $1 trillion. Thus, their total estimates of all costs to the US economy range from $1 to $2 trillion.[4]

This sounds like a lot of money but how much of our total income is this?

Over the next ten years $2 trillion represents less than 2% of our total Gross Domestic Product.[5] The direct costs to the US taxpayer (between $800 b. and a trillion dollars) represent a higher proportion of the federal budget (3.5%)[6] but one could legitimately make the case that if this were a war for the very survival of our society (as was the case during World War II) it would be a relatively small price to pay.[7]

Here is where common sense has to take over. No matter how horrendous the events of September 11, 2001, our survival as a society cannot be threatened by Osama Bin Laden and his insane followers. The British endured decades of Irish nationalist terrorism, the Spanish have endured decades of Basque separatist terrorism. Our survival was truly threatened by the danger of Nuclear War with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. One could legitimately claim infinite value for the benefits of preventing a nuclear war.

This is not the case in Iraq. There is no benefit from fighting that war.

Stiglitz and Bilmes end their presentation by listing the costs of the Iraq War that they did not attempt to quantify. These include all costs borne by other countries including Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, hundreds of thousands wounded. [8] Thousands including the most educated and talented members of the population have either been forced from their homes or fled the country. Iraqi infrastructure has been destroyed and not rebuilt. These costs are clearly difficult to quantify but there is no question that they are significant.

Loss and destruction in Iraq have created more terrorist opportunities – they’ve made terrorist recruitment easier and have probably reduced the effectiveness of our global anti-terrorism efforts. So where do we find any benefits of the war? Most experts agree that the dangers from international terrorism have been increased due to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.[9]

Stiglitz has noted in an interview that $2 trillion over 10 years would represent (at $200 billion a year) four times the amount that the whole world (not just the United States) spends on foreign aid.[10] Spending the money on foreign aid rather than a misguided foreign adventure would do a lot more for the national interests of our country than the tragically lost American lives in Iraq along with all the wasted money.

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[1]Wall Street Journal “Bush Economic Aide Says Cost Of Iraq War May Top $100 Billion,” Davis 09/16/02; NYT, “Estimated Cost of Iraq War Reduced, Bumiller, 12/31/02; Reuters News, “Daniels sees U.S. Iraq war cost below $200 billion,” 09/18/02. There is a fascinating web site that has collected a number of administrative statements about the cost of the war and the projected reconstruction costs. Here is the link:

http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm.

[2] See: Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion. Estimates vary, but all agree price is far higher than initially expected http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/ The reference to Lindsey is as follows: “White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was the exception to the rule, offering an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion in a September 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal. That figure raised eyebrows at the time, although Lindsey argued the cost was small, adding, "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

… Back in 2002, the White House was quick to distance itself from Lindsey's view. Mitch Daniels, director of the White House budget office, quickly called the estimate "very, very high." Lindsey himself was dismissed in a shake-up of the White House economic team later that year, …”

[3] The ratio of wounded to dead among all casualties for the current Iraq War is 7.4 to 1. By contrast, in the Vietnam War, the ratio was 1 to 2.6 and World War II was 1 to 1.6. This Defense Department data was published in the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, February 28, 2007, p. A6.

[4] For the Stiglitz and Bilmes study go to: http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/cost_of_war_in_iraq.pdf.

The title is The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict. There is an interesting interview given by Stiglitz to the German Magazine Spiegel which is available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,409710,00.html in which Professor Stiglitz summarizes some of his results.

[5] Using Congressional Budget Office estimates (at cbo.gov) for GDP for 2007 through 2015, I came with an approximation of $150 trillion in GDP over those years. $2 trillion is 1.3% of that.

[6] CBO expenditure projections from 2008 through 2015 add up to approximately $28.7 trillion. $1 trillion is 3.5% of that.

[7] Just to give an idea, in 1943, 44 and 45, expenditures on National Defense averaged 37% of GDP. See Economic Report of the President, 2004: 378.

[8]There is a web site IRAQI BODY COUNT http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

which gives an up to the date estimate of civilian dead. As of Tuesday, March 6, 2007 the range was from 57,800 to 63,500. This is undoubtedly a serious undercount because it is restricted to explicitly recorded deaths (morgues, press). A study published in the British Journal the LANCET estimated the deaths at over 650,000 directly and indirectly caused by the US invasion and the subsequent violence. This estimate has been vigorously debated in an Australian journal.

See http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21338505-2703,00.html. Regardless of how high the casualty figures, even if we go with the numbers from Iraqi Body Count, the result is horrific.

[9]Karen De Young of the Washington Post reported that the National Intelligence Estimate in 2006 had concluded that the War in Iraq had damaged the war against the jihadist terrorists rather than being part of its successful prosecution. The article was from September 24, 2006 on p. A 01. The link is

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092301130.html.

In the language of economics, this translates that the “benefits” from fighting the war in Iraq have been NEGATIVE. Since there were no weapons of mass destruction, the only benefit from the war would involve a positive step towards successful conclusion of our nation’s war against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001. That is the crucial point of the conclusions of all the various governmental intelligence agencies who together prepared this National Intelligence Estimate.

[10] See the Stiglitz interview with Der Spiegel referenced in note 4 above. The entire interview is available below.

What follows are two texts: An interview with Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz about the costs of the Iraq War and an excerpt from a new book by Chalmers Johnson called NEMESIS: THE LAST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

First Stiglitz:

"The War Is Bad for the Economy"

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, 63, discusses the true $1 trillion cost of the Iraq conflict, its impact on the oil market and the questions of whether the West can afford to impose sanctions on Iran.

SPIEGEL: Professor Stiglitz, at the beginning of the Iraq war, the United States administration was hoping to almost break even in terms of the costs ...

Stiglitz: ... they truly believed the Iraqi people could use their oil revenues to pay for reconstruction.

SPIEGEL: And now you are estimating the cost of war at levels between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. How do you explain this difference?

Stiglitz: First, the war was much more difficult than President Bush and his government expected. They thought they were going to walk in, everybody would say thank you, and they would set up a democratic government and leave. Now that this war is lasting so much longer, they constantly have to adapt their budget. It rose from $50 billion to $250 billion. Today, the Congressional Budget Office talks about $500 billion or more for this adventure.

SPIEGEL: That's still by far lower than your own calculations.

Stiglitz: The reported numbers do not even include the full budgetary costs to the government. And the budgetary costs are but a fraction of the costs to the economy as a whole. And compare this to Gulf War number one, where America almost made a profit!

SPIEGEL: Because Germany paid for it?

Stiglitz: Because Germans paid, because everybody paid. We got our allies to pay full price for used equipment, and we got to refurbish our military. This time, most of the other countries were not willing to do so again.

SPIEGEL: Did Bush just miscalculate, or was he misleading the public about the true costs of war?

Stiglitz: I think it was both. He wanted to believe it was not going to be expensive, he wanted to believe it would be easy. But there's also enormous evidence now that information channels into the White House were distorted. Bush wanted only certain information, and that's mostly what they supplied him with. Larry Lindsey ...

SPIEGEL: ... the White House's former top economic adviser ...

Stiglitz: ... gave -- back in 2002 -- a number of up to $200 billion. I think that was the most accurate inside information at the time. He was dismissed. They didn't want to hear it.

SPIEGEL: In the US, the financial costs of war are seldom discussed. It used to be considered a sacrifice to achieve common goals. Why is it different today?

Stiglitz: This is not like a world war where you're attacked. We were attacked in Pearl Harbor, we had to respond. This time, we had a choice, we had to decide how and who we are going to attack ...

SPIEGEL: ... and if you can afford it.

Stiglitz: Well, we can afford it, that's not the issue. The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid. So what we're talking about is multiplying the foreign aid budget 20-fold. Wouldn't you say this could do more for peace and stability and security?

.SPIEGEL: Bush would argue it's worth spending that much to decrease the probability of a major terrorist attack on the US.

Stiglitz: Nobody takes that seriously. Instead, most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

SPIEGEL: How did you calculate the costs of the war?

Stiglitz: The official figures are only the tip of an enormous iceberg. For instance, one of the costs of the war is that soldiers today get very seriously injured but stay alive, and we can keep them alive but at an enormous price.

SPIEGEL: Is this the biggest item in your calculations?

Stiglitz: It's very important. The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded -- 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come. And the administration isn't even generous with veterans, widows and their kids.

SPIEGEL: What does that mean?

Stiglitz: If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here. If you happen to put your life at risk fighting for your country, you get a little. If you walk across the street and get injured, you get a lot more. Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

SPIEGEL: How much will a severely brain-damaged soldier cost the US government?

Stiglitz: My moderate estimate is about $4 million. For this group alone there will be a total cost of $35 billion that nobody is talking about. But look at the broader picture: The Veterans Administration originally projected that roughly 23,000 veterans returning from Iraq would seek medical care last year. But in June 2005, it revised this number to an estimated 103,000. No wonder the Veterans Administration had to appeal Congress for emergency funding of $1.5 billion last year.

COSTS OF WAR: With a troop withdrawal by 2010: $839 b. in direct costs [explicit military expenditures, veteran care, debt servicing…] – for withdrawal by 2015 that cost rises to $1.189 b.

The indirect costs of the war to the economy (increased oil prices, slower economic growth) are: Withdrawal in 2010: $187 b. – withdrawal in 2015: $1.050 b.

TOTAL: 2010 withdrawal: 1.0 trillion; 2015 withdrawal: 2.2 trillion

SPIEGEL: If this is a $1 trillion war, why couldn't the US provide its soldiers with safer body armor and better protected vehicles?

STIGLITZ: Obviously, the US can afford to pay for body armor. Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, said you have to fight with the armor you have, but that's unconscionable. The military is focusing only on the short run costs. If they don't provide appropriate body armor, they save some money today, but the healthcare cost is going to be the future for some other president down the line. I view that as both fiscally and morally irresponsible.

SPIEGEL: This war could have been both safer for the troops and cheaper for the country?

Stiglitz: Exactly.

SPIEGEL: Is war no longer affordable even for countries as rich as the United States?

Stiglitz: You have to remember we are an economy of $13 trillion a year. The issue is not whether you can afford it but whether this is the way you want to spend your money. In using the limited resources that we have for fighting this war, we have less resources to do other things. You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

SPIEGEL: Before the invasion of Iraq, the US administration said the best way to keep oil prices in check is a short and successful war. A barrel was at $25 at that time, and now it's over $60. What of this increase is due to Iraq?

Stiglitz: In our analysis about the cost of war, we only assumed a modest $5 to $10 caused by the war. We wanted to keep our study conservative, so no one would dispute our numbers, and no one did. But I believe that's a vast underestimation of the true cost.

SPIEGEL: But why? China and India are increasing their demand, real global growth has been going on. This is driving the prices.

Stiglitz: When demand rises so does supply -- that's how markets usually work. Now we're seeing that demand for oil is rising but we're not getting a commensurate increase in supply. And there's a simple answer, it's Iraq. But it's not just because it production has been down.

SPIEGEL: Why else?

Stiglitz: The Middle East is the lowest cost producer in the world. They can produce oil for $10, $15 or $20 a barrel. Now we have the technology to produce oil elsewhere for $35 to $45. But who wants to develop fields or invest in new technologies elsewhere if they know that in five years' time, the Middle East may be supplying oil at previous prices?

SPIEGEL: In other words, were peace and stability re-established in the Middle East, the oil price would be back to maybe $25, despite the huge global hunger for energy?

Stiglitz: Yes. By the way that's the price level oil traders were speculating on in futures trading before the outbreak of war.

SPIEGEL: There should be huge economic pressure on Bush to end this conflict.

Stiglitz: The only people benefiting in this war are Bush's friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier. The price of oil is up, and they make money when the price of oil goes up. Their profits are at record levels.

SPIEGEL: You don't like this president very much.

Stiglitz: Oh, it's nothing personal. It's all about his politics.

SPIEGEL: There is an old saying: War is good for the economy.

Stiglitz: Listen, World War II was really unusual, because America was in the Great Depression before. So the war did help the US economy to get securely out of this decline. This time, the war is bad for the economy in both the short and long run. We could have spent trillions in research or education instead. This would have led to future productivity increases.

SPIEGEL: So is the economical mess of the Iraq war even bigger than the political?

Stiglitz: Well, we are so rich, we are able to withstand even this level. Crowding out other investments, weakening the economy in the future, that's not a crisis yet. But it's an erosion. It becomes an issue for our legislators. And don't forget the serious issues of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea. We used up our ability to deal with something serious by dealing with something that was less serious.

SPIEGEL: What's your economic view on Iran?

Stiglitz: We are helping the people that Bush says are evil. Teheran couldn't be happier about the high oil prices resulting from the Iraq war.

SPIEGEL: If the UN Security Council votes for sanctions over Iran and its oil exports, what would that mean for the world economy?

Stiglitz: It would mean an enormous disruption, as oil prices might rise over $100. You can increase the price from $25 to $40, and people can absorb it. If the price rises above $60, they become unhappy. They start to adjust, they move to smaller cars, drive a little bit less. At $100 or $120, there are major changes in lifestyle. The sales of cars will plummet. Poor people will be facing real problems of heat versus food.

SPIEGEL: The world can't afford sanctions at this time?

Stiglitz: We talk about not allowing their officials to get visas to visit our countries.

SPIEGEL: That's not a harsh measure.

Stiglitz: It's no sanction. So the answer is, yes, we have no effective sanctions.

SPIEGEL: Professor Stiglitz, thank you for this interview.

NOW JOHNSON:

737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire

By Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books

The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days
of the American Republic" (Metropolitan Books).

Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies.
America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing
politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing
imperial "footprint" and the militarism that grows with it.

It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases.
Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although
instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to
2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has
been an immense churning in the numbers of installations. 

The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according
to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit
of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas
bases continues to go up. 

Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American
facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our
bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army
garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD
required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from
Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for
an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and
forty. 

Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas
bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger
than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion
for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of
Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the
military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel
as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials,
and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.

The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those
based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306
Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its
overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks,
hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more
that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering
687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one
of the world's largest landlords. 

These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the
actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance,
to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a
province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and
maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root,
a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston. 

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005,
Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has
established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas
since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by
other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly
true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish
government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from
its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in
Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If
there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top
1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows
the exact number for sure. 

In some cases, foreign countries themselves have tried to keep their U.S. bases
secret, fearing embarrassment if their collusion with American imperialism were
revealed. In other instances, the Pentagon seems to want to play down the building of
facilities aimed at dominating energy sources, or, in a related situation, retaining
a network of bases that would keep Iraq under our hegemony regardless of the wishes
of any future Iraqi government. The U.S. government tries not to divulge any
information about the bases we use to eavesdrop on global communications, or our
nuclear deployments, which, as William Arkin, an authority on the subject, writes,
"[have] violated its treaty obligations. The U.S. was lying to many of its closest
allies, even in NATO, about its nuclear designs. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons,
hundreds of bases, and dozens of ships and submarines existed in a special secret
world of their own with no rational military or even 'deterrence' justification." 

In Jordan, to take but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand
troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has also cooperated with
the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for "interrogation.") Nonetheless, 
Jordan continues to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States,
no bases, and no American military presence. 

The country is formally sovereign but actually a satellite of the United States and
has been so for at least the past ten years. Similarly, before our withdrawal from 
Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous
and easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government
demanded. So long as military bureaucrats can continue to enforce a culture of
secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least
of all the elected representatives of the American people. 

In 2005, deployments at home and abroad were in a state of considerable
flux. This was said to be caused both by a long overdue change in the
strategy for maintaining our global dominance and by the closing of
surplus bases at home. In reality, many of the changes seemed to be
determined largely by the Bush administration's urge to punish nations and domestic
states that had not supported its efforts in Iraq and to reward those that had. Thus,
within the United States, bases were being relocated to the South, to states with
cultures, as the Christian Science Monitor put it, "more tied to martial traditions"
than the Northeast, the northern Middle West, or the Pacific Coast. According to a
North Carolina businessman gloating over his new customers, "The military is going
where it is wanted and valued most."

In part, the realignment revolved around the Pentagon's decision to bring home by
2007 or 2008 two army divisions from Germany -- the First Armored Division and the
First Infantry Division -- and one brigade (3,500 men) of the Second Infantry
Division from South Korea (which, in 2005, was officially rehoused at Fort Carson,
Colorado). So long as the Iraq insurgency continues, the forces involved are mostly
overseas and the facilities at home are not ready for them (nor is there enough money
budgeted to get them ready). 

Nonetheless, sooner or later, up to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family
members will have to be accommodated within the United States. The
attendant 2005 "base closings" in the United States are actually a base
consolidation and enlargement program with tremendous infusions of money and
customers going to a few selected hub areas. At the same time, what sounds like a
retrenchment in the empire abroad is really proving to be an exponential growth in
new types of bases -- without dependents and the amenities they would require -- in
very remote areas where the U.S. military has never been before.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was obvious to anyone who thought
about it that the huge concentrations of American military might in Germany, Italy, 
Japan, and South Korea were no longer needed to meet possible military threats. There
were not going to be future wars with the Soviet Union or any country connected to
any of those places. 

In 1991, the first Bush administration should have begun decommissioning or
redeploying redundant forces; and, in fact, the Clinton administration did close
some bases in Germany, such as those protecting the Fulda Gap, once envisioned as
the likeliest route for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But nothing was really
done in those years to plan for the strategic repositioning of the American military
outside the United States.

By the end of the 1990s, the neoconservatives were developing their
grandiose theories to promote overt imperialism by the "lone superpower" -- including
preventive and preemptive unilateral military action, spreading democracy abroad at
the point of a gun, obstructing the rise of any "near-peer" country or bloc of
countries that might challenge U.S. military supremacy, and a vision of a
"democratic" Middle East that would supply us with all the oil we wanted. A component
of their grand design was a redeployment and streamlining of the military. The
initial rationale was for a program of transformation that would turn the armed
forces into a lighter, more agile, more high-tech military, which, it was imagined,
would free up funds that could be invested in imperial policing.

What came to be known as "defense transformation" first began to be
publicly bandied about during the 2000 presidential election campaign.
Then 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq intervened. In August 2002, when the
whole neocon program began to be put into action, it centered above all on a quick,
easy war to incorporate Iraq into the empire. By this time, civilian leaders in the
Pentagon had become dangerously overconfident because of what they perceived as
America's military brilliance and invincibility as demonstrated in its 2001 campaign
against the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- a strategy that involved reigniting the Afghan
civil war through huge payoffs to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance warlords and the
massive use of American airpower to support their advance on Kabul.

In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unveiled his "1-4-2-1 defense
strategy" to replace the Clinton era's plan for having a military capable of
fighting two wars -- in the Middle East and Northeast Asia -- simultaneously. Now,
war planners were to prepare to defend the United States while building and
assembling forces capable of "deterring aggression and coercion" in four "critical
regions": Europe, Northeast Asia (South Korea and Japan), East Asia (the Taiwan
Strait), and the Middle East, be able to defeat aggression in two of these regions
simultaneously, and "win decisively" (in the sense of "regime change" and occupation)
in one of those conflicts "at a time and place of our choosing." As the military
analyst William M. Arkin commented, "[With] American military forces ... already
stretched to the limit, the new strategy goes far beyond preparing for reactive
contingencies and reads more like a plan for picking fights in new parts of the
world."

A seemingly easy three-week victory over Saddam Hussein's forces in the
spring of 2003 only reconfirmed these plans. The U.S. military was now
thought to be so magnificent that it could accomplish any task assigned to it. The
collapse of the Baathist regime in Baghdad also emboldened Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld to use "transformation" to penalize nations that had been, at best,
lukewarm about America's unilateralism -- Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and
Turkey -- and to reward those whose leaders had welcomed Operation Iraqi Freedom,
including such old allies as Japan and Italy but also former communist countries
such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. The result was the Department of Defense's
Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy, known informally as the "Global
Posture Review."

President Bush first mentioned it in a statement on November 21, 2003, in which he
pledged to "realign the global posture" of the United States. He reiterated the
phrase and elaborated on it on August 16, 2004, in a speech to the annual convention
of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati.  Because Bush's Cincinnati address
was part of the 2004 presidential election campaign, his comments were not taken
very seriously at the time.  While he did say that the United States would reduce
its troop strength in Europe and Asia by 60,000 to 70,000, he assured his listeners
that this would take a decade to accomplish -- well beyond his term in office – and
made a series of promises that sounded more like a reenlistment pitch than a
statement of strategy.

"Over the coming decade, we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible
force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here
at home. We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they
can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats. ... It will reduce the stress on
our troops and our military families. ... See, our service members will have more
time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career. Our
military spouses will have fewer job changes, greater stability, more time for their
kids and to spend with their families at home."

On September 23, 2004, however, Secretary Rumsfeld disclosed the first
concrete details of the plan to the Senate Armed Services Committee. With
characteristic grandiosity, he described it as "the biggest re-structuring of 
America's global forces since 1945." Quoting then undersecretary Douglas Feith, he
added, "During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks
and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there. We're operating
now [with] an entirely different concept. We need to be able to do [the] whole range
of military operations, from combat to peacekeeping, anywhere in the world pretty
quickly."

Though this may sound plausible enough, in basing terms it opens up a vast
landscape of diplomatic and bureaucratic minefields that Rumsfeld's militarists
surely underestimated. In order to expand into new areas, the Departments of State
and Defense must negotiate with the host countries such things as Status of Forces
Agreements, or SOFAs, which are discussed in detail in the next chapter. In addition,
they must conclude many other required protocols, such as access rights for our
aircraft and ships into foreign territory and airspace, and Article 98 Agreements.
The latter refer to article 98 of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute,
which allows countries to exempt U.S. citizens on their territory from the ICC's
jurisdiction.

Such immunity agreements were congressionally mandated by the American
Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, even though the European Union
holds that they are illegal. Still other necessary accords are acquisitions
and cross-servicing agreements or ACSAs, which concern thesupply and storage of jet
fuel, ammunition, and so forth; terms of leases on real property; levels of bilateral
political and economic aid to the United States (so-called host-nation support);
training and exercise arrangements (Are night landings allowed? Live firing drills?);
and environmental pollution liabilities.

When the United States is not present in a country as its conqueror or
military savior, as it was in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II and in
South Korea after the 1953 Korean War armistice, it is much more difficult to secure
the kinds of agreements that allow the Pentagon to do anything it wants and that
cause a host nation to pick up a large part of the costs of doing so. When not based
on conquest, the structure of the American empire of bases comes to look exceedingly
fragile.

>From the book NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers  Johnson.
Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and
Company, LLC. Copyright (c) 2006 by Chalmers Johnson. All rights reserved.
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute


FOR A LINK TO WORKS OF JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ go to this web address:


http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/newworks.cfm


Scroll down to The Costs of the Iraq War -- NBER working paper by Joseph Stiglitz
and Linda Bilmes.

For evidence that the Bush Administration is planning an attack on Iran see:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HDZB2432Z4F1LQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/25/wiran25.xml