Iraq - A Strategic Blunder?

[Dayuhan]

One factor that has to be considered, but which is impossible to quantify, is the degree to which the focus on Iraq diverted attention and resources from Afghanistan and from the broader effort against AQ.

I'd have to say on balance that the Iraq program has worked out better than I expected, though as mentioned above it remains to be seen whether the current government can survive, and what will replace it if it does not.

[Fuchs]

One factor that has to be considered, but which is impossible to quantify, is the degree to which the focus on Iraq diverted attention and resources from Afghanistan and from the broader effort against AQ.

Even worse, stupid wars distract from urgent domestic reform needs.
Domestic problems can easily reach an annual relevance/loss of hundreds of billion USD. Few foreign policy problems come close to this, especially not a smallish already defeated dictator at the other end of the world.


A method for weighting the monetary costs is to add the discounted future debt servicing for the sum, using the appropriate debt interest rates.
In short: USD 100 billion war costs cost more than USD 100 billion. It's likely more close to USD 120 billion because of the additional interest.
This does apply similarly even in case of a debt-free state, for that one would have opportunity costs (the cost of getting no interest rate income on the sum).

[Dayuhan]

Defeating dictators is easy. Controlling nations is difficult. Constructing new nations is more difficult. All of this could have been anticipated, and a more accurate assessment of the challenge might have affected the decision to some extent.

Against the cost + interest of the war one has to offset the cost of sustaining the stalemate that preceded it. If the current Iraqi government survives and manages to push oil production up to 6mbpd or so one would have to factor in the impact of additional supply on global oil prices. And of course the world looks better without Saddam Hussein sitting as a head of state, another of those unquantifiable benefits.

I doubt that anyone will ever come up with a full, credible, agenda-free assessment of cost and benefit, or even that it would be possible to do so, given the non-quantifiable nature of many of the factors involved. If the current Iraqi government survives, remains relatively neutral, and resumes oil production the operation will probably be slotted into the "qualified success" category, whether or not it really belongs there.