Earlier this week I posted a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on the costs for the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and for the war in Iraq: $439 billion and $319 billion, respectively. (See the report at http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printve...ocumentID=3401)

CRS has also distributed on Capitol Hill a table showing the costs of all previous major wars the United States has been involved in. In the interests of history and comparison, we present the CRS data in a more simplified table form below.

Table: Costs of Major U.S. Wars (All dollars in billions; source: Congressional Research Service)

War
Current (Then Year) Dollars
Constant (FY 2007) Dollars

American Revolution
0.12
3.577

War of 1812
0.89
1.126

Mexican War
0.82
1.987

Civil War (US)
2.30
56.297

Civil War (CSA)
1.0
24.506

Spanish-American War
0.27
7.286

World War I
33.0
642.0

World War II
296.0
3,211.0

Korea
67.0
691.0

Vietnam
111.0
650.0

Desert Storm
61.0
92.0

GWOT
n/a
439.0


The current war is now the fifth most expensive in U.S. history (behind World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War). If the Congressional Budget Office correctly projects 2007 to 2016 GWOT costs at $371 billion, the current war’s total becomes $810 billion, which would make it America’s second most expensive war (second only to World War II).

Click here to see the CRS table, as distributed on Capitol Hill.
Please go directly to the link. Thank you


Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
202 797-5271 in DC
301 840-1362 in MD
winslowwheeler@comcast.net