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Department of Uh-Oh, a continuing series
Hezbollah seems to be a rather cheap organization -- the highest estimate I can find is $400 million per year, about the cost of a single F/A-22 Raptor.
That is from Matt Yglesias.
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Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 8, 2006 at 09:21 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
But does that estimate include how much Iran spends on Hezbollah?
Posted by: Matt Tievsky at Aug 8, 2006 9:30:38 AM
Western intelligence sources estimate Hezbollah's annual budget to be approximately $400 million, including almost $100 million annually from Iran.
So yeah I guess it does.
Posted by: Juicy Lurker at Aug 8, 2006 10:08:26 AM
Unfortunately, I don't think we can just be Coasian and pay them $500 million to disarm and chill out.
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Aug 8, 2006 11:24:31 AM
Guerilla fighters operating on a shoe-string budget in today's money, and having to run a *legitimate political party* with that same $400 million?
Worked for Ho Chi Minh, and we all know how that one wound up...
Posted by: Jeremy Ballenger at Aug 8, 2006 11:53:28 AM
Guerilla warfare *is* cheap, and the motivation usually excellent.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Aug 8, 2006 12:39:16 PM
Tyler,
Yeah, the most interesting thing is that of the $400M they have anually, most of that is probably spent on the social services they provide througout southern Lebanon. They run schools, hospitals, clinics, farming centers, all sorts of stuff. I'd be surprised if the amount that they were actually able to spend on armaments was more than 25-50% of that total. So you have a "government within a government" running off of $400M with 25% of that coming from Iran (that stat alone is rather interesting--to hear a lot of people on the internet, you'd think it was closer to 90% or so), facing off against a government that spends about $9 Billion per year on their military alone, and that has been getting $2-3 Billion a year in military aid from the US. And they're still only a couple miles inside of Lebanon at the furthest after nearly a month of this stuff going on? Israel government has already embarassed themselves, and probably made the situation for their people far, far worse than had they taken a more measured response to Hezbollah. Here's to hoping the leaders on both sides grow up a bit before too many of their people end up getting killed for their pride.
~Jon
Posted by: Jonathan Goff at Aug 8, 2006 12:41:25 PM
Is that really cheap? On a simple "kill-the-other-guy" basis, that $400MM has purchased approximately 100 Israeli casualties and minimal damage to Israeli infrastructure. Leaving aside the infrastructure for the moment, we're talking $4MM per dead Israeli. The IDF's budget is what, about $35 billion shekels? At and exchange rate of 4.4=$1, we're talking a budget of about $8 billion, or $8MM per Lebanese casualty. On that basis, Hezbollah is efficient, but not spectacularly so. Include the massive damage to infrastructure and the on-going losses to incomes in southern Lebanon, which are matched only in a relatively thin zone of Israel, and I think Hezbollah doesn't look like much of a bargain.
This doesn't take into account political goals, of course, or each organization's relative ability to bring about their fruition, which is probably a more accurate measure of "cheapness".
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Aug 8, 2006 12:42:47 PM
Bernard, Israel is spending all that money on pin-point accuracy surely! And if they were better funded there would of course be even fewer casualties. Military casualties are few so you are underestimating costs in the comparison, even if you also exclude Israeli civilians. Mostly they seem to add soldiers to the Israeli total to make the discrepancy less embarassing but at least until recently indiscriminate targetting of civilians had killed more soldiers than civilians while precision targetting of military objectives had gone spectacularly the opposite way.
Casualties are obviously not the right measure in any case. Israel is outspending Hizbollah on arms at nearly 100 to 1 and failing to bend it to its will or even reduce its effectiveness. I'd say that was quite economically effective.
Posted by: Jack at Aug 8, 2006 1:16:05 PM
Their weapons have been purchased over many years and they have been using very little till now. Also if you have a dedicated work force your labor costs are cheap.
When you compare the deal Israel could have gotten in Rome more than 2 weeks ago with what it will probably end up with when a cease fire is finally called, it looks like Tyler dollar game is going full tilt.
Posted by: joan at Aug 8, 2006 1:44:28 PM
Bernard- Only Hezbollah deaths count for Israel's kill ratio. Civilian deaths are a negative.
Posted by: joan at Aug 8, 2006 1:50:12 PM
The general idea is that carrots and sticks work better than sticks alone.
America bought Egypt off in 1978 for $2 billion per year in public transfers. Jordan has been cheaper, with most payments, I presume, going privately to big shots' Swiss bank accounts. Syria is defintely not a rich country, nor a transparent one. It seems like there's a possibility it could be bribed away from its Iranian alliance.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 8, 2006 2:23:53 PM
9/11 was even cheaper. Some flying lessons, some plane tickets, some box cutters, and some martyrs.
The cheapness of indiscriminate mass murder is old news.
Posted by: Constant at Aug 8, 2006 10:02:12 PM
At least one of the 911 hijackers was motivated by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And he was Lebanese, too. Which new set of terrorists get their motivation from this year's invasion?
Posted by: Peter at Aug 9, 2006 9:08:58 AM
"Which new set of terrorists get their motivation from this year's invasion?"
Hopefully the ones that already got killed. :^)
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Aug 11, 2006 11:35:39 AM
"Which new set of terrorists get their motivation from this year's invasion?"
Hopefully the ones that already got killed. :^)
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Aug 11, 2006 11:48:24 AM
"Which new set of terrorists get their motivation from this year's invasion?"
Hopefully the ones that already got killed. :^)
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