CBO’s Estimate on Long-Term Iraq Presence Appears ConservativeThe Congressional Budget Office’s cost-analysis of a U.S. presence in Iraq following the Korea model — stationing 55,000 troops there indefinitely, in CBO’s reckoning — allows for the crunching of numbers several different ways. But most appear to be fairly conservative.
CBO estimates that a Korea-style garrisoning will require 55,000 troops for either combat missions or non-combat missions. The former is expected to cost $25 billion annually, and the latter $10 billion annually, on top of one-time fixed costs of $4-$8 billion for the former and $8 billion for the latter. But neither scenario envisions total costs of what President Bush has cited as an “enduring relationship” between the U.S. and Iraq. Funding for the Iraqi security forces, diplomatic operations or country-to-country aid — probably billions of dollars — is outside the scope of the CBO report.
Totaling the full cost of the Iraq war requires accepting a range of estimates, particularly in the case of tabulating prospective costs, rather than ones already incurred. Both this report and a preceding CBO report present a ballpark, not a set projection. And an aggregate set of projections for the Iraq war’s future cost can only emerge when an endpoint is envisioned. Since the Bush administration has flirted with a Korea-style model for U.S. troops, it seems reasonable to envision a 50-year endpoint, commensurate with the 54 years U.S. troops have been garrisoned in postwar South Korea.
CBO’s August budget outlook found (large pdf) that the costs from 2008 to 2017 of sustaining a presence in Iraq of 75,000 troops would be approximately $1 trillion. If the force level is cut to 35,000 during that period of time, the cost would accordingly diminish, at $669 billion. (Those figures include the cost of an extended Afghanistan presence, but doesn’t itemize how many troops at what expense is for either country. The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is about nine percent of what it is in Iraq.) So it’s not necessarily the case that CBO’s new study picks up where the August outlook left off — since, compared to one scenario in the August outlook, the U.S. would have to increase troops in Iraq by about 20,000.
Similarly, counting from 2017 using the non-combat scenario in the new CBO study, by the time the U.S. presence in Iraq reaches Korea-type lengths, the U.S. will spend about $400 billion in Iraq on top of what it’s already spent, and what the CBO estimates it will spend through 2017. The combat scenario puts that tag at $1 billion, so the actual estimate by 2057 is between those two figures. CBO is agnostic between them. Nor does it calculate costs at any particular point in time, opting instead to simply give an annual cost estimate for either scenario.
A failing in the new CBO study is that it has little choice but to assume static operations for both combat and non-combat scenarios. The operations pace of the combat scenario is “similar to those U.S. forces are currently experiencing in Iraq.” For how many years that would last, the report can’t say. Similarly, the non-combat scenario assumes a “zero or near-zero level of combat.” The reality will probably be between the two, and will fluctuate over time. Indeed, General Petraeus’ plan last week envisions U.S. forces gradually transitioning from the former to the latter. But such fluctuation isn’t something a budget estimate can take into account.
Even with the proviso that the combat scenario probably envisions more combat over time than U.S. troops will actually see, the costs for the scenario appear low. CBO estimates an annual rate of replacement for equipment at $1 billion, assuming the equipment is used at twice its peacetime rate. However, the war so far has created significant stress on military equipment, ratcheting costs upward, and continued combat will also continue the trend. CBO, to its credit, acknowledges that such stress might bring the true annual total of combat operations in Iraq at a troop level of 55,000 to “exceed $30 billion.” Even that figure might be too low, as it doesn’t take into account the possibility of future base construction.
The non-combat scenario does. In some areas, the non-combat scenario has sound assumptions, as it doesn’t expect the U.S. to rely on Iraq’s economy or infrastructure for support. But it also assumes a lower level of equipment and other logistical cost than the Pentagon’s cost-of-war execution reports. Nor does it appear to tabulate costs for the logistical chain outside of Iraq — in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf — necessary to sustain a troop presence in the country.
Still, it’s clear that keeping troops in Iraq on any kind of enduring basis will be a costly exercise — something that’s pretty intuitive. It’ll also have costs that the CBO can’t take into account in this study: for instance, it’s deliberately agnostic on the future size of the military, which will probably need to increase if the U.S. is either consistently rotating units into Iraq (combat) or devoting units for garrisoning them there (non-combat, as with the Army’s Second Infantry Division in Korea before the Iraq war) in order to respond to other contingencies. And then there’s the more diffuse cost in provocation to the Arab world that a long-term U.S. presence there will very likely have.
