Doubts about the Terror War have taken the strangest forms of late. Many
who are against the war in Iraq and critical of the War on Terror have
begun using a favorite tool of fiscal conservatives to question military
and homeland security expenditures. And it would seem to be a clever and
plausible move (albeit a little hypocritical). In short, critics are asking
whether we should spend so much money on the military and homeland
security. Is it overkill -- or more aptly, perhaps, over-save?
Conservative risk-cost-benefit analysis arguments usually go like this: A
certain Superfund initiative has the likelihood of saving one human life
for every $200,000 spent. Now, given that we have a finite Federal health
and safety budget, wouldn't it make more sense to spend that $200,000 on
something that could save 100 lives? For example, if the government were to
put up guardrails near unsafe curves around the country, wouldn't we
increase the likelihood of saving more lives? Risk analysts say: if you're
going to spend the money, save more lives. It's a simple utilitarian
calculation, but it makes a lot of sense when there's a bottom to the
federal pot. In fact, one can apply risk analysis to a variety of
environmental issues. Ironically, the people who care the most about the
environment are usually the ones who turn the deafest ears to this kind of
rationale.
But maybe their ears are not as deaf as we think, as many who are against
the Iraq War and aspects of the War on Terror are turning the rationale of
risk analysis to current security expenditures. And this isn't a bad idea
at the face of it. The questions become: how many American lives will be
saved by spending billions over in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as
billions on a costly Homeland Security bureaucracy (not to mention
soldiers' lives)? Couldn't we save more lives spending that money somewhere
else?
OK, let's back up. While I'm quite happy to see questions of risks, costs
and benefits coming from unusual quarters, I don't believe such criticisms
can be employed in quite the same way in the case of national security. The
disanalogies come in comparing the relevant aspects of the different
domains -- i.e. the aspects of the environment versus aspects of national
security.
First, in the former domain, the threats are usually static. Lead-level in
the soil of Aspen, Colorado is a known, calculable risk that is not really
subject to change into the future. In the latter domain, the threats are
dynamic. Why? Call it the human factor. The economic conditions, political
structures, funding networks, emotions, resolve and animus on the part of
current or future Jihadis is in constant flux -- and thus the threat is
indeterminate in many respects. One thing we can predict, however, is that
complacency and inaction will embolden our enemies. Thus complacency and
inaction are sure to increase the dangers. Terrorist threats have a kind of
"multiplier effect," where toxins in soil etc., in most cases, do not.
Consider the argument that says scaling back of military and intelligence
spending during the Clinton years made 9-11 more likely, not less. In such
a case, there were consequences of complacency and inaction. For al Qaeda,
the United States was perceived as a "paper tiger" both in its
unwillingness to see military endeavors to their conclusions, and in its
inertia with respect to prior, smaller-scale terrorist strikes (which
should have served as warnings). There is some merit in these arguments,
even though one should doubt any Administration (Clinton's or Bush's) could
have truly come to grips with such dangers until they materialized that
September morning. In any case, we have learned a lot since 2001, and one
of things we now know is that inaction and complacency is a particularly
bad option. And in the future, a few more successful terrorist strikes
could change the dynamic considerably.
Therefore, in the case of national security, it's really not a question of
trying to tally up the average number of lives lost in terrorist attacks
over the last twenty odd years and calculate that number against the
anti-terror expenditures in order to derive a cost-per-life figure to apply
in the next budget. In the case of terrorism, there are so many more
variables; and the variables shift as the relevant parties act (or fail to
act).
But suppose for a moment we were going to take such a tack. We would have
to do some pretty serious Monte Carlo-type projections just to get a
ballpark estimate of what 3000 productive lives would have yielded in the
future, not to mention their network effects on the economy. And even Monte
Carlo couldn't help us with calculating the net benefit of productive lives
not taken thanks to current "expensive" security measures. Now, apart from
3000 dead, think of the billions of dollars lost, caused by Americans too
spooked to fly as many as three years after 9/11. The airline industry
continues to suffer. And that's just one sector of the economy. What were
the systemic, geometric effects of that day on the US economy generally?
Big numbers, to be sure. To prevent further such events is worthwhile as we
begin to try and reckon with the nebulous costs of future acts of
terrorism. And while we might arrive merely at intuitive conclusions, a
couple of hundred billion dollars may start to look like small potatoes in
the grand scheme.
Here's another way of looking at it: Imagine what the world might be like
today had the US not engaged in an arms race with the Soviet Union. We
could have been left with a Soviet Empire extant in the 21st Century, or
worse, a nuclear holocaust. In the eighties, however, the US ran deficits
high and military expenditures were close to 6 percent of GDP. Since the
Soviet economy was inherently self-corrupting, the system was bound
eventually to fail as the Soviets maintained a policy of keeping up with
the United States' nuclear program. The end of the Cold War yielded a
decade of relative peace. How much, in dollar terms, was such a peace worth
to us? In any case, such future benefits could not have fit easily into the
calculus of risk-cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, the point is not that we
could have predicted with the utmost certainty the time and place of the
Soviet Union's collapse, but that the only credible strategic option was to
engage in the arms race -- real costs notwithstanding.
Likewise, we will not really ever be able to tell how many lives we will
save because homeland security has been beefed up. We also cannot yet see
whether Iraq will thrive as a liberal democracy and whether the project
will result in overall Middle Eastern political reform. But these
incalculables, such as they are, represent the promise of a future peace
whose current investments will be but drops in the bucket if the vision
does succeed. If these grand investments in pre-emption and security fail,
I'm sure there are a lot of people who will claim 20/20 hindsight. But
thankfully, no one will be able to claim hindsight about the future returns
(good or ill) of inaction and complacency.
Charlotte Wuerzig is a writer in the Washington, DC area.