The Secondary Effects of War

One of the causes of poor analysis is ignoring or discounting the secondary effects of an action. Once classic example is price wars, which are usually started when one company tries to gain market share and doesn't accurately predict what its competitors will do in response.

I think one of the reasons the Iraq war has been so unsuccessful is that the secondary effects of our actions were underestimated or not seriously considered. The recent Red Cross report does a good job pointing out not only the "Shootings, bombings, abductions, murders, military operations and other forms of violence [which] are forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety elsewhere", but some of these secondary effects of war:

Health Care: "Health-care facilities are stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with mass casualties day-in, day-out. Many sick and injured people do not go to hospital because it’s too dangerous, and the patients and medical staff in those facilities are frequently threatened or targeted."

Food: "Food shortages have been reported in several areas. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, malnutrition has increased over the past year. The vastly inadequate water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is presenting a risk to public health."

Poverty: "Unemployment and poverty levels are rising and many families continue to rely on government food distributions to cover their immediate needs. According to government sources, an estimated one third of the population lives in poverty, while over five percent live in extreme poverty."

Physical Infrastructure: "Much of Iraq’s vital infrastructure is in a poor state of repair owing to lack of maintenance and because security constraints have impeded repair work on electrical power grids, water and sanitation systems, medical facilities and other essential facilities. Power shortages are growing worse throughout the country, including northern areas, owing largely to the failure to carry out maintenance and to increase generation capacity. Fuel shortages affecting power stations and acts of sabotage are further aggravating the crisis. As a result, water treatment plants, primary health-care centres and hospitals rely mainly on back-up generators, which often break down owing to excess usage or fall victim to the chronic fuel shortages."

Of course we aren't bombing hospitals and power plants, but our actions have indirectly caused these problems. If the proper homework was done, many of these secondary effects could have been accounted for, and we could have weighed them into our decision making process. The controversial Lancet study, which accounted for some of the human costs of the problems above, estimated 600,000 Iraqi's are dead because of our actions. I think that if we had explicitly considered these costs in our pre-war analysis, the decision we made would have been very different.