Cost of Post-9/11 Wars Expected to Top $6 Trillion.

* The U.S. government has already appropriated trillions of dollars for post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts, and the price tag is expected to increase by an additional $1 trillion or more in the coming decades, according to a recent study.

Neta Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, tallied up counterterrorism-related spending in a report titled, "United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY 2020: $6.4 Trillion."

Estimated expenditures from fiscal years 2001 to 2020 totaled approximately $5.4 trillion including: $1.96 trillion for U.S. military overseas contingency operations; $131 billion for State Department OCO; $925 billion in interest on borrowing for Defense and State OCO; $803 billion in war-related spending in the Pentagon's base budget; $100 billion in the "OCO for base" spending category for fiscal years 2019 and 2020; $437 billion for medical and disability care for post-9/11 veterans; and $1.05 trillion for counterterrorism-related homeland security spending, according to the report.

In the coming decades, an additional $1 trillion or more is projected to be spent on medical care for veterans of these conflicts, it noted.

"These wars, and the domestic counterterrorism mobilization, have entailed...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT