The Cost of War: Relative Values

The UK Government is increasing the number of its troops in Afghanistan to 9,500. A correspondent writing to The Independent quotes Gordon Brown as saying each serviceman costs £392,000 per year. So in addition to the 235 UK servicemens' lives (so far), the war is costing the UK over £10.2 million per day. Presumably, the other coalition members are spending a similar amount; total coalition troop losses are 1,464. Meanwhile, the UK has given £1.079 billion in overseas aid to Afghanistan since 2001 which is about £370,000 per day.

A lot of that money will no doubt have been spent with companies based in the countries comprising the coalition forces, so some will eventually (if Adam Smith was right) trickle back into our economy. A lot will simply vanish through corruption and/or bad accounting. But it is anybody's guess whether any of it will make life better for many Aghanistanis or even make any difference in the so-called 'war on terror'. Whether or not the strategy of fighting the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan is worthwhile or even winnable is a separate argument, but I was just wondering what else the UK could be spending that £10.5 million a day on.

When I worked for the Government on urban regeneration, before investing any money in major projects we always had to consider the 'opportunity cost' of doing so compared with spending the money elsewhere. For example, £4 million on a road bridge in Middlesbrough - would that bring a better return than spending £4 million setting up a wild life reserve; or decontaminating the site of a blast furnace; or clearing an old canal. We would agonise endlessly on such matters, and the hardest part was always persuading The Treasury to agree to spend anything at all. But if we'd had £10.5 million to spend per day! Caramba! The UK's urban regeneration problems would have been fixed in the wink of an eye - we wouldn't have been able to think up projects fast enough! The Tees Barrage cost £50 million and we had to have an Act of Parliament passed to get it built - that's just five days expenditure in Afghanistan!