Cost of war Assignment Help

War can be defined as the organised and prolonged conflict carried on between the two or more parties usually featured by aggression, disruption and high mortality as well. War has various adverse consequences such as the displacement of people, death, and loss of physical and social capital and destruction of public infrastructure (Mickolus, 2004). The Analysis on of cost of war presents the two schools of thought on the consequences of war, the first thought present the social and economic cost of war is not only one time but it will remain persistent over many years.

Since the effects of war are carried on for longer time period but still there are good reasons to assume that recovery is still possible in such circumstances. This is as per the assumption of the neoclassical theory. The Evidence of recovery in various war affected regions has shown the recovery as per the neoclassical theory of growth and convergence. Hence various regions such as the Europe, republic of Korea and Vietnam have shown economic growth and convergence but it requires very large time and high economic cost.

The Cost of various civil war are huge and various literature related with cost estimation of civil war have tried to find out the cost. Various studies have tried to find out the cost of civil war after the peace agreement was signed. In order to find out the cost of war the methodology used by the analyst was event study method in which cross section of various countries were taken and well defined time period of pre and post war was selected. In such studies various costs related with civil war such as the social, economical and political impacts were analysed (Ghobarah et al, 2003).

War kills people, weaken the institution of the country, erode social trust of the nation and destroy infrastructure of the nation. The Destructive impacts of the war are such that it increases the chances of diseases, crime, instability in political system and further conflicts related with the same or other issues (Fosu and  Collier, 2005). World Bank in year 2003 provided the data about the cost of civil war across the countries. As per the data war has impact on the economic growth of nation as well as the world economic growth as well since the trade and other transactions are related with other countries.

Hence it has been observed that the economic growth slows down by 2.2% during the war as compared to the peacetime. The Growth of economy is also related with many factors of the country such as the literacy rate of the country, poverty within the country, lifestyle with in the country (House & Freedom, 2005). Hence the literacy rate and poverty also gets affected in the country. Hence the economic growth which slows down during the war and after the war situation also slows down the social life of the people of the country.

As per the data published by World Health Organisation on major 23 diseases, it has been found that civil was increases the chances of death and various other disabilities. As an example civil war which happened in Colombia reduced the life expectancy rate by 2.2 years and the country lost 9.7 percent of the GDP due to the war. Also the chances of death and further disabilities in the current and coming generation increased by 15% as compared to the peacetime (Davis and  Weinstein, 2002).

Hence the above studies have shown that the war initiates the more number of deaths in a country and also the number of death also increases considerably during the war. Hence the life expectancy in the war affected regions get decreased affected the overall lifestyle of the country.

Some other studies carried out by (Murdoch and Sandler, 2002) focus their attention on the cost paid for civil war by the neighbouring countries. The Entire neighbouring countries are also affected by the war in a particular country especially the growth rate of the country reduces down subsequently during the war. A study carried out by (Montalvo and Querol, 2007) highlights that there are high chances of Malaria occurring chances in the refugee receiving countries. The Study shows that for every 1000 refugees accepted by any country there were more than 2000 to 2500 cases of malaria cases found in refugee accepting country.

A study done by (Organski and Kugler, 1977) show the impacts of both the World War on the economies of various European countries, the study states that the impact of war were long time (15 to 20 years) and after the war both the countries i.e. winner as well as loser comes back to their pre war growth state. Hence the growth of the countries participating in war gets lagged by 15 to 20 years from their other competing economies in the world. Hence some of the countries which have very slow growth rate after the war situation was due to the reason that their one of the factor of production gets affected very badly which didn’t allowed the growth of their economy even their another factors of productions were working well.

Another study carried out by (Sala-i-Martin, 1995) states that whenever any war impairs one factor of growth more than other factor of production then the returns which are obtained on the other factor of production gets increased and the overall economy of the country affected badly since the overall growth gets halted. Since one factor of growth is not sufficient for the economic growth of the country hence the other factor of production which is not affected also incapable to add growth to the economy of the country.

Some studies also have shown the conflicting results from the above mentioned studies. As study carried out by (Przeworski et al, 2000) have shown that the average growth rate after the war is more than 5.98 per cent in any war affected country. Also the study shows that the impact of war is more severe in the country where dictatorship structure of ruling is present instead of democracy. But it is also evident from the study that the growth recovery is also faster in the countries where the ruling structure is dictatorship as compared to the democracy.

Study carried out by (Miguel and Roland, 2005) analysis the impact of US bombing on the Vietnam's economic and social growth. Though heavy bombing was done by US but comparing the status of heavy bombing the recovery was done much faster and impacts of bombing were not so severe after few years since the local recovery was very much faster hence long term impacts were not there. The Bombing was not having any long lasting impacts on the consumption rate of the country, poverty in the country, literacy and infrastructure of the country as measured in year 2002. This study concluded that the growth after the war is possible if the certain conditions are met such as the local support, growth plans, proper direction and government etc.

The Impacts of bombing done by US on Japan during World War-II were analysed in another study (Davis and Weinstein, 2002) which states that though the size of cities was very small which were affected. Also the recovery in terms of economic growth was much faster looking at the impacts of the bombing though the social life is not still normal in those cities as they are badly affected by the harmful radiations emitted by the nuclear substances. Those radiations will now have their impact on the children which take birth in those cities as many of the children still born with various kinds of diseases due to the harmful radiations emitted by the nuclear substances.

The effects of terrorism on the global capital markets were analysed by (Chen and Siems, 2004) in one of their studies related with the cost of war. They found out that the US capital market is highly sensitive to the terrorist attacks which are occurring in US and any of such developed nations across countries since the capital market across the world are interrelated. Hence during past years there were total 14 terrorist attacks happened in US and impact of these terrorist attacks was enormous on the US capital market as the capital markets crashed badly. The Terrorist attack done on 11^th Sep, 2001 on US and other military invasion has their major impact on the US capital market and other countries capital market (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004).

Though the impacts of terrorist attacks were severe on the US capital market as compared to the other capital markets around the world but the US capital market recovered very soon in comparison to the other capital markets around the world. Hence war has high economic, social, political and environmental effects on the various parties involved in it.

Aftermath of conflict to build peace

Peacekeeping process has become essential and has shown growth during past few years around the world in various countries. After the year 1990 there is considerable growth in the peacekeeping process and has evolved as the key issue for resolving the international crisis which is very alarming and has spread widely across all the countries (Collier, 1999). The Peacekeeping process helps in establishing peace process not only in the war affected countries but also saves the other countries from the harmful impacts they would have to bear if peace process would not be initiated.

Peace process is said to be started when the military of opposite countries initiate the process of ceasefire and separate combatants after inter-state war. UN peacekeepers military and civilians establish the peace process by emerging in post conflict situation and they assist the conflicting parties to implement the peace agreement signed by them. The Results of such assistance comes in the form of confidence building measure, human security and power sharing agreements etc. In various cold war situations the UN peacekeepers have played their major role by peacekeeping and peace building process which have resulted in successful peace making process around the world.

UN has its separate peacekeeping division which act in the situation of war in order to establish peace among the conflicting parties. The Peacekeeping unit of the UN is known as the Department of peacekeeping operation i.e. DPKO. There are more than 110,000 personnel serving for the purpose of peacemaking in more than 18 nations around the world for UN operations. In addition to this UN has also started their special department named department of field support in which UN supports 12 special peacekeeping and political missions (Bruno and Easterly, 1998).

In various UN operations as the peacekeeping process around the globe women are also playing vital role, as their number has grown by 40% in only last half to one year of time span. The process of peacekeeping is very costly for the nations which are involved in it and UN as well (Chen and  Siems, 2004). It require huge amount of money for establishing the peace process after the war situation as the budget which was passed in UN for the peace process in year 2007-2008 was around US $7.2 Billion. Hence the amount which was spent in year 2008 for the peacekeeping process by UN across the world presents the half the budget of the military of all nation combined together.

The Military force which initiate the peace process in various countries involves heavy military also and UN do not have its own military. The Military force required by UN for the peacekeeping process is provided by its various member states. As of March, 2008 UN has its 118 member countries who contribute their military in the UN peacekeeping process. Most of the troops are provided by various developing countries such as the India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria. The troops are provided by the developing countries while the funding part is being taken care of by the developed nations such as the US, UK, Germany and Japan etc. Among the various developed countries the major part of the funding is contributed by US who contributes the 26% of the overall funding to UN peacekeeping process.

In order to do the peacekeeping process various mandates are required from the UN side and the missions are formed under the name of united nation security council (UNSC). Every mission is provided with a certain mandate which is basically a description of the mission to be accomplished so that the objective of the whole process can be cleared in advance. If any mandate and mission has been passed by the united nation Security Council then in order to change the mandate it require the agreement of 9 or more members of the security council out of the whole 15 members.

Also the permanent members of the united nation play a vital role in deciding about the mandate and mission i.e. any one out of 5 permanent members of UN (China, France, Russian Federation, UK and US) votes against the mission and mandate of the peacekeeping then that particular project is considered to be failed and will not be worked upon. Most of the peacekeeping missions are formed by the united nation itself and troops and funding part is taken care of by its member countries. If in any case UN can’t have its direct involvement into the peacekeeping process then in that case UN will authorize various regional organisations to initiate the peacekeeping process such as the European Union, African Union and North Atlantic territory organisation (NATO) etc. Order Now