{"id":184989,"date":"2021-05-17T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=184989"},"modified":"2021-05-13T10:24:10","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T09:24:10","slug":"the-costs-of-war-to-u-s-allies-since-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/the-costs-of-war-to-u-s-allies-since-9-11\/","title":{"rendered":"The Costs of War to U.S. Allies since 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>12 May 2021<\/h3>\n

The United States\u2019 allies in the post-9\/11 wars have borne significant human and budgetary costs, and these costs should be included in a full accounting of the consequences of these wars. The ‘post-9\/11 wars’ refers to U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that have grown out of President George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. While Afghan and Iraqi government security forces have incurred the highest human costs of these wars, this research paper focuses on the human and financial contributions of European and other allies of the U.S.<\/p>\n

Assessing the costs to allies informs current scholarly and policy debates on the value of U.S. military alliances. President Donald Trump, for example, failed to acknowledge the value of most U.S. alliances; for instance, he threatened to leave South Korea and Japan to defend themselves and talked repeatedly about withdrawing the U.S. from NATO. \u00a0In contrast, President Joe Biden\u2019s administration stresses the myriad benefits allies bring to the U.S. as a reason to rekindle the relationships that suffered during the Trump presidency.<\/p>\n

This paper documents what U.S. allies have spent, in human lives and in resources, on their participation in U.S.-led military operations since September 11, 2001. It examines the top five suppliers of troops to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq during the year of peak coalition deployment for each conflict (2011 and 2006 respectively). It examines the size of U.S. and allied deployments relative to each country\u2019s populations at the time. Then, turning to the longer war period from 2001 to 2018, the paper tallies each allied nation\u2019s total fatalities and considers these numbers relative to the size of their deployments. The paper also compares U.S. and each ally\u2019s military spending for the wars. Finally, it outlines U.S. and allied spending on foreign aid to Afghanistan and Iraq through 2018.<\/p>\n

In general, allies incurred these costs primarily to further their alliances with the United States. The discussions in each of the following sections on Afghanistan and on Iraq draw on existing scholarship to suggest why each ally contributed to the extent it did. These are not definitive explanations (which would require extensive interviews with allied decision makers), but are intended to suggest potential avenues for future research.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Allied countries\u2019 provision of troops to the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan dates to the earliest days of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, when the coalition\u2019s goal was to kill and capture Al Qaeda members and overthrow the Taliban regime that had hosted Al Qaeda leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. After those initial moments of the war, allied contributions continued under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)\u2019s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). At the coalition\u2019s peak size (in terms of troop totals) in February 2011, the U.S. deployed roughly 100,000 troops and all other allies\u2019 deployments totaled 41,893 troops.<\/p>\n

Table 1 lists the top five non-U.S. suppliers of troops to ISAF in February 2011: the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada. At that time\u2014almost ten years after the first coalition forces arrived in Afghanistan\u2014forty-seven countries had troops deployed to Afghanistan. While none of the top troop providers approached the U.S. deployment, either in size or as a percentage of their populations, they all made substantial contributions. The United Kingdom stands out in that it supplied roughly two to three times the troops of the other top contributing allies when considered relative to its population. Each of the other top providers made a similar contribution on a per capita basis, deploying roughly 0.006% of their populations.<\/p>\n

Table 1: Top Troop Suppliers to Afghanistan as of February 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Country Troops as % of Population<\/strong><\/p>\n

United States 100,000 .032<\/p>\n

United Kingdom 9,500 .015<\/p>\n

Germany 4,920 .006<\/p>\n

France 4,000 .006<\/p>\n

Italy 3,770 .006<\/p>\n

Canada 2,905 .008<\/p>\n

Table 2 compares the top suppliers in terms of the number of fatalities they incurred from the start of the war in 2001 through 2018: the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy. While the U.S. had the largest total number of fatalities, the allies were not mere bystanders, as some believe. Some U.S. military service members, for instance, joked that ISAF stood for \u201cI Saw Americans Fight\u201d because of all the caveats and limits on when and how some allies could engage the enemy. Yet hundreds of allied troops died. The United Kingdom lost 455 service members, Canada lost 158, and France, Germany, and Italy each lost dozens.<\/p>\n

When we look at numbers of fatalities relative to the size of each country\u2019s deployment, Canadian soldiers suffered the highest risk of dying, with their 158 fatalities accounting for 5.4% of Canada\u2019s peak deployment in 2011. The United Kingdom\u2019s 455 fatalities amounted to 4.7% of its peak deployment in 2011. In comparison, the U.S. incurred 2,316 fatalities, which was 2.3% of its peak deployment in 2011. These numbers demonstrate that British and Canadian troops were not hiding from the fight\u2014they put their lives at risk at twice the rate of American troops, when seen as a percentage of peak deployment. France\u2019s fatalities as a percentage of peak deployment were similar to those of the U.S., and Germany and Italy were close behind.<\/p>\n

Table 2: Top Allied Fatalities in Afghanistan, October 2001-September 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Country Fatalities as % of Peak Deployment<\/strong><\/p>\n

United States 2,316 2.3<\/p>\n

United Kingdom 455 4.7<\/p>\n

Canada 158 5.4<\/p>\n

France 86 2.1<\/p>\n

Germany 54 1.0<\/p>\n

Italy 48 1.2<\/p>\n

Allied nations also spent significant sums of money on their military presence in Afghanistan (Table 3). While at first glance the level of allied spending might seem insignificant relative to U.S. spending, it is useful to consider each ally\u2019s spending in Afghanistan as a percentage of that ally\u2019s total annual defense spending. This comparison puts each country\u2019s spending in Afghanistan in relation to its total military budget, and enables a comparison of allied and U.S. spending in relative terms.<\/p>\n

When we consider each country\u2019s spending as a percentage of its total military expenditure in one year, the United Kingdom\u2019s 2001-18 military spending on Afghanistan was roughly half the U.S. figure. Whereas the U.S. spent over one hundred percent of its baseline on seventeen years of its campaign in Afghanistan, the UK spent 56% of its baseline spending in Afghanistan over the same time period. Canada\u2019s military spending on Afghanistan was also roughly half of U.S. spending as a percentage of its baseline. Italy spent a third of its baseline spending on its Afghanistan operations whereas Germany spent a quarter of its expenditures and France spent only seven percent.<\/p>\n

TO READ FULL PAPER PLEASE DOWNLOAD PDF FILE:<\/h3>\n

Davidson_AlliesCostsofWar_Final<\/a><\/h3>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jason Davidson is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary <\/em>Washington. Email: jdavidso@umw.edu<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 May 2021 – The US allies in the post-9\/11 wars have borne significant human and budgetary costs. They were the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that have grown from the “Global War on Terror.” While the Afghan and Iraqi governments incurred the highest human costs, this research paper focuses on the human and financial contributions of European and other allies of the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":184994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[2477,1594,492,481],"class_list":["post-184989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-the-week","tag-9-11","tag-war-economy","tag-war-on-terror","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}