New Delhi: Are wars good for economy? The idea which gained prominence during the World War II has proved to be wrong in the case of US war in Iraq, says a new book.
Today, no serious economist holds the view that war is good for the economy. Since the Iraq war began, oil prices have gone from about $25 a barrel at the outset to more than $90 and are rising still higher.
In America, the war has hurt the economy in other ways, the question being not whether the economy has been weakened by the war. The question is only by how much, say Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and Linda Bilmes in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War.
Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Bilmes is a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The authors say many people around the world, not just in the Middle East believe the US government went to war because it wanted to get its hands on Iraqi oil. "We aren't going to discuss their arguments here. It is enough to say that if America went to war in the hope of securing cheap oil, we failed miserably. We did, however, succeed in making the oil companies richer. Exxon-Mobile and other oil companies have been among the few real beneficiaries of the war, as their profits and share prices have soared," they say.
Meanwhile, the economy as a whole has paid a high price, the book says. Oil prices started to soar just as the war began and the longer it has dragged on, the higher prices have gone. "This certainly suggests that the war has something to do with the rising prices," the book says.
