Cost of the Afghanistan War

On March 23rd, 2010, the BBC News contained an item which stated that Britain’s defence budget would be £36 billion in deficit within the next ten years.

In October 2008, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade handed over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines. Interviewed, he said it would be impossible to defeat the Taliban.

A victory over the Taliban, he continued, is “neither feasible nor supportable.”

In October 2008, the Rupee News stated:
“NATO forces in Afghanistan have been defeated. The British, the Germans, and the rest know it. The US, instead of admitting it, is broadening the theatre of operations. It is dangerously expanding the war into Pakistan.”


For a very long time it has been accepted without question that when the nation is at war, there must be no argument about cost; what the military requires must be provided.

That is an understandable assumption when the nation is being attacked and fighting for its existence. Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy at the end of the Second World War, but the policy of all-out war, not counting the cost, did save Britain from conquest by the Nazis.

But why should that assumption apply to wars where there is no risk of Britain being invaded?

Anyhow, such arguments are likely to sound more and more abstract, as the British people discover they have less and less money to spend on the lethal fireworks of modern combat.

Millions of people in the Middle East think the war waged by NATO in Afghanistan is thoroughly immoral. Some of us may think so too. But now we need not bother too much about whether the war is immoral. On the one hand, it is unwinnable; on the other, we cannot afford to continue with it.

Bring the troops home.