Released in June 2011, the Costs of War report was compiled by more than 20 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists as the first comprehensive analysis of a decade of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.  The Costs of War Project analyzes the implications of these wars in the United States and internationally in terms of human casualties, economic costs, and civil liberties.

The report was produced by the Eisenhower Study Group, which is continuing into its second year of research on other aspects of the wars’ impacts as a nonpartisan, nonprofit, scholarly initiative based at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The Study Group derives its purpose from President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” as the only force able to balance the contrasting demands of security and liberty in a democratic state. 

Over 25 of the Group’s draft papers to date are posted on this site, with further research findings to be posted in the coming months.

Futher information is available from Project Directors Catherine Lutz (Catherine_Lutz@brown.edu) and Neta Crawford (nccrawford@earthlink.net).

Project Directors

Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science at Boston University.  She is the author of more than two dozen peer reviewed articles on issues of war and peace and the author of two books, Soviet Military Aircraft (1987) and Argument and Change in World Politics (2002), named Best Book in International History and Politics by the American Political Science Association.  Crawford has served on the governing Board of the Academic Council of the United Nations System, and on the Governing Council of the American Political Science Association.

Catherine Lutz is the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies and Chair, Department of Anthropology at Brown University.  She is the author of numerous books on the US military and its bases and personnel, including  Breaking Ranks (with M. Gutmann, 2010), The Bases of Empire (ed., 2009); Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (2001), and a co-founder of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.  She has also conducted research on UN peacekeeping in Haiti and Lebanon.  Lutz is past president of the American Ethnological Society, the largest organization of cultural anthropologists in the US.  

Project Coordinator:

Andrea Mazzarino received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Brown University in 2010.  In 2011 she served as Faculty Fellow at the Holleran Center for Public Policy and Community Action at Connecticut College.  As a Ruth Landes Gender Studies Scholar in 2011-2012, she is conducting research on women, national politics, and work in urban Russia. 

Communications Director, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University

Karen Lynch began her career as a journalist and editor covering the global telecommunication and internet sectors.  Prior to joining Brown, she was communications and content director at the Development Gateway Foundation, a World Bank initiative using the web to share information and practical solutions for alleviating poverty.  She is also past director of the Markle Foundation’s Global Digital Opportunity Program, which advanced the use of information and communication technologies for development.

Contributors: 

Nadje Al-Ali is Professor of Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007), amongst many other publications about women and gender in the Middle East. She is also a founding member of Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq.

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University.  A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph.D. in American diplomatic history from Princeton.  He is the author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010), The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008), and The New American Militarism:  How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005), among other books. 

Shiva Balaghi is an International Humanities Fellow at the Cogut Center, Brown University, where she teaches History and Art History. Her books include Saddam Hussein: A Biography (2005), Picturing Iran: Art, Society, and Revolution (co-edited, 2002), and Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power (co-edited, 1994). She is an Associate Editor of Review of Middle East Studies and a Contributor to Jadaliyya.

Chantal Berman recently received her B.A. from Brown University with degrees in International Relations and Middle East Studies. She has conducted research on Iraqi refugee policies in Syria and Lebanon. Berman works as an Assistant Producer at Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Linda J. Bilmes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is a leading expert on US budgeting and public finance.  Bilmes was Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration.  She is co-author (with Joseph Stiglitz) of the New York Times bestseller The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008).  She has written extensively on the cost of war and veterans’ issues, including "Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits” (2007).  Bilmes is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Anita Dancs is Assistant Professor of Economics at Western New England College.  She writes on the military and the U.S. economy, and the economics of war.  She has been interviewed extensively by national media including appearances on CNN, CNBC, and Marketplace, and her research has been covered by the Washington Post, New York Times, and Associated Press amongst others.  She was research director of the National Priorities Project, and has been a staff economist with the Center for Popular Economics for more than 15 years, making economics more accessible to the general population. 

Omar Dewachi is a physician from Iraq and medical anthropologist, currently an Assistant Professor of Public Health at the American University of Beirut. In 2008, he graduated from Harvard University with a PhD in Social Anthropology.  Dewachi has worked on Iraqi medical doctors, their role in the formation of the Iraqi state, migration to the UK and integration in the British National Health Service (NHS).  Dewachi’s current research is on humanitarian interventions on displaced Iraqis in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Ryan D. Edwards is Assistant Professor of Economics at Queens College, a member of the doctoral faculty at the City University of New York, and a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research.  His studies focus on the interrelated causes and consequences of health, mortality, and economic well-being.  

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University (Massachusetts) in the Program of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of International Development, Community and the Environment (IDCE). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.  Among Enloe’s books are Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000); The Curious Feminist (2004); and Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (2007), Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010).  Enloe’s latest book (coauthored with Joni Seager) is The Real State of America: Mapping the Myths and Truths of the United States (2011).

Matthew Evangelista is President White Professor of History and Political Science and former chair of the Department of Government at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in international and comparative politics.  He is the author of five books: Innovation and the Arms Race (1988); Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (1999); The Chechen Wars (2002); Law, Ethics, and the War on Terror (2008); and Gender, Nationalism, and War (2011). He is the editor of Peace Studies, 4 vols. (2005), and co-editor of Partners or Rivals? European-American Relations after Iraq (2005); New Wars, New Laws? Applying the Laws of War in 21^st Century Conflicts (2005); and Democracy and Security (2008).

Brendan M Fischer is a law fellow with the Center for Media and Democracy. He will graduate from Wisconsin Law School in December 2011. Prior to law school, he worked for a music publicist and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural community in El Salvador.

Phillip Gara is a filmmaker with the Global Media Project at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was an associate producer on the documentary Human Terrain, directed shorts including Virtuous War, Disastrous Horizons, The Military Industrial Complex...50 Years Later, and is currently directing a feature documentary, Project Z.

Heidi Garrett-Peltier holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She currently works as a Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass.  Heidi has written and contributed to a number of reports on the clean energy economy, including Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States and The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy.  She has also written about the employment effects of defense spending with co-author Robert Pollin in publications such as The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities.  Additionally, Heidi has consulted with the U.S. Department of Energy on federal energy programs and she is an active member of the Center for Popular Economics. 

Lisa Graves is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.  She has testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Senate and House on national security issues.  Graves’ former leadership posts include serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy/Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice; Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Courts; Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee; Senior Legislative Strategist for the ACLU; and Deputy Director of the Center for National Security Studies.  She has also appeared as an expert on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, National Public Radio, Air America, Pacifica Radio, and in the major US dailies.

William D. Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program, New America Foundation.  He is an internationally recognized expert on the arms trade, nuclear policy, and military spending.  Hartung is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex (2011), the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (2008), and And Weapons for All (1995).  Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.  He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the Lehrer Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets.

Jennifer Heath is an independent scholar, curator, award-winning activist and cultural journalist, author/editor of nine books, including A House White With Sorrow: A Ballad for Afghanistan, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics, and Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women (co-edited with Ashraf Zahedi).  She is the founder of Seeds for Afghanistan and the Afghanistan Relief Organization Midwife Training and Infant Care Program. 

James Heintz is Associate Research Professor and Associate Director at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published widely on employment, economic policy, labor standards, international trade, clean energy, and human rights.  He has worked with the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Development Program, the UN Research Institute for Social Development, and the Economic Commission for Africa.  Part of his work has involved examining the relationships between economic policy and social and economic rights in conjunction with various human rights organizations.

Alison Howell is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester.  Her research explores the politics of medicine in global affairs, with a specific focus on mental health, security, and global governance.  She is the author of a forthcoming book, titled Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security and the Global Governance of Mental Health, which is being published by Routledge.  She has also published in the areas of gender and foreign policy, the politics of detention, the place of suicide in global affairs, and on mental health reform in Iraq.  As a Fulbright Scholar and Chair, at both Brown University's Watson Institute and SUNY's Center for the Study of Canada, she is currently conducting research on mental health policies and programs in both the US and Canadian militaries. 

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning author and journalist.  He spent nine months in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 as one of the few unembedded, independent US journalists in the country reporting on the Iraq war and its human costs.  He has also reported from Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, following Iraqi refugees as well as other conflicts in the region. Jamail’s stories have been appeared via Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian, The Independent, Al-Jazeera, and The Nation, among others.  Jamail reports for Democracy Now! and Al-Jazeera English, and has appeared on the BBC, NPR, and Russia Today.  He has received the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and four Project Censored awards.

Norah Niland has spent much of her professional life with the United Nations, both in the field (including assignments in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Liberia and Afghanistan), and in New York on humanitarian, human rights, and development issues.  Niland recently completed an assignment in 2010 in Afghanistan as Director of Human Rights in UNAMA.  Before this, she was in charge of policy development with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva. 

Nicola Pratt is Associate Professor of International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick, UK. She is co-author of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009) and co-editor of Women and War in the Middle East (2009), both with Nadje Al-Ali. Her current research is on gendering the politics of in/security in the Middle East. 

Winslow T. Wheeler is Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC.  He is the author of The Wastrels of Defense (2004) and Military Reform (2007), and the editor of the anthology The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You through It (2011) and the 2008 anthology, America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (2009).  From 1971 to 2002, Wheeler worked on national security issues for members of the U.S. Senate and for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).  In the Senate, Wheeler advised Jacob K. Javits (R-NY), Nancy L. Kassebaum (R-KS), David Pryor (D-AR), and Pete V. Domenici (R-NM).  He was the first and last Senate staffer to work simultaneously on the staffs of a Republican and a Democrat.

Zoë H. Wool received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is currently a Postdoctoral Associate.  She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with injured U.S. soldiers and their families rehabilitating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.   Her work on this and other issues related to the U.S. military since 9/11 can be found in peer reviewed journals of Anthropology and Sociology.

Bassam Yousif is associate professor of economics at Indiana State University.  He has written extensively on the economic development and political economy of Iraq.  Recent publications include, ‘The Political Economy of Sectarianism in Iraq,’ International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, (forthcoming in) 2011.  His work has led to policy consulting.  His book on the development history of Iraq, The Human Development of Iraq, is forthcoming from Routledge (fall 2011). 

We would also like to thank Joseph Grady at Cultural Logic for his consultations on this website. Research assistance on the project was also provided by Dr. Kathleen Millar, and Brown University students Sujaya Desai, Sofia Quesada, Hannah Winkler, and David Granberg.  In addition, thanks to Christina Rowley for her assistance in helping establish the Eisenhower Research Project.  Deborah Healey provided expert administrative assistance.

Board Members, Eisenhower Research Project
Christian Appy, University of Massachusetts
William Astore, Pennsylvania College of Technology, USAF (Ret.)
Andrew Bacevich, Boston University, USA (Ret.)
Aaron Belkin, University of California, Los Angeles
Peter Burgess, Peace Research Institute, Oslo
Carol Cohn, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights
Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto
Neta Crawford, Boston University
Anita Dancs, Western New England College
Tom Engelhardt, The Nation Institute
Cynthia Enloe, Clark University 
Sabine Fruhstuck, University of California, Santa Barbara
Henry Giroux, Pennsylvania State University
William Hartung, New America Foundation
Elizabeth Hillman, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Michael Klare, Hampshire College
Michael Sherry, Northwestern University 
J. Ann Tickner, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
David Vine, American University
Rachel Woodward, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Marilyn Young, New York University