UK military operations since cold war have cost £34bn, says study.

[dipsydoodle]

Study says bulk of money was spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, interventions judged later to be 'strategic failures'


Britain's military operations since the end of the cold war have cost £34.7bn and a further £30bn may have to be spent on long-term veteran care, according to an authoritative study.

The bulk of the money has been spent on interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan judged to have been "strategic failures", says the study, Wars in Peace, published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

In comments with particular resonance in the light of Tony Blair's speech on Wednesday exhorting the west to do more to defeat Islamic extremism, the RUSI study concludes that "there is no longer any serious disagreement" that Britain's role in the Iraq war served to channel and increase the radicalisation of young Muslims in the UK.

The RUSI study refers to estimates of 100,000 Iraqis killed, with 2 million refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/uk-military-operations-costs

[Jeneral2885]

1. How was the Balkans

a failure?

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Only the early part in Bosnia

In what it calls a "strategic scorecard", the study gives UK military interventions six out of 10. Counted as the six successful operations are the first Iraq war in 1991, later no-fly zones over Iraq, the later interventions in Bosnia, the Kosovo war in 1999, Sierra Leone in 2000, and operations launched in 2001 which led to the flight of the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership from Afghanistan.

Failures are listed as attempts at peacekeeping in Bosnia in the early 1990s, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, the British deployment in Helmand in southern Afghanistan, which started in 2006, and the air strikes in Libya in 2011.

I think I agree with that - Bosnia was a deadly mess for some time.