Through Fiscal Year 2022, the United States federal government has spent and obligated $8 trillion dollarson the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere. This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care.
This total omits many other expenses, such as the macroeconomic costs to the US economy; the opportunity costs of not investing war dollars in alternative sectors; future interest on war borrowing; and local government and private war costs.
Public access to budget information about the post-9/11 is imperfect and incomplete. The scale of spending alone makes it hard to grasp. Public understanding of the budgetary costs of war is further limited by secrecy, faulty accountingand the deferral of current costs.
The current wars have been paid for almost entirely by borrowing. This borrowing has raised the U.S. budget deficit, increased the national debt and had other macroeconomic effects, such as raising consumer interest rates. Unless the U.S. immediately repays the money borrowed for war, there will also be future interest payments. We estimate that interest payments could total over $6.5 trillion by the 2050s.
Spending on the wars has involved opportunity costs for the U.S. economy. Although military spending does produce jobs, spending in other areas such as health care could produce more jobs. Additionally, investment in nonmilitary public infrastructure such as roads and schools has not grown at the same rate as investment in military infrastructure.
Finally, in addition to federal war costs, the post-9/11 wars have cost billions of dollars of state, municipal and private funds, including dollars spent on services for returned veterans and their families and local homeland security efforts.
(Page updated as of September 2021)
