Heidi Peltier Interviewed by CBS News on Costs of Afghanistan War

Heidi Peltier, a Research Professor at Boston University’s Department of Political Science and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, was recently interviewed by CBS News about the current and projected human and monetary costs of the war in Afghanistan.

“We’ve spent more than $2.5 trillion just on Afghanistan so far, and a lot of the spending will occur in the future as we continue to care for veterans and we continue to pay interest on the debt incurred for the war,” Prof. Peltier said. “These wars have been funded exclusively through debt… For the post-9/11 wars together we’ve already incurred $1 trillion of interest and that will add up to $2 trillion by 2030, and these numbers are going to continue to climb.”

Prof. Peltier also drew on her recent research for the Costs of War project on the enormous growth of U.S. military contractors during the post-9/11 wars.

Prof. Peltier’s segment begins at the 2:50 mark of the video above.

Prof. Peltier is the Director of the Costs of War project’s “20 Years of War” research series at the Pardee Center, launched in October 2019 in collaboration with Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. The Costs of War project has explored the human, financial, environmental, social, and political costs of the post-9/11 wars. The two-year “20 Years of War” series based at the Pardee Center is producing a new set of analyses to mark 20 years since the beginning of the post-9/11 wars.