How Much Does War Really Cost? Stiglitz Exposes Illusions

This article deconstructs the economic illusions that accompany contemporary armed conflicts through the lens of Joseph Stiglitz's theory. The author explains how mechanisms such as obfuscation accounting and the agency problem allow governments to conceal enormous expenditures from the public. The text analyzes specific cases: American perception management in the Strait of Hormuz, Israeli existential rhetoric masking a spending increase to 8% of GDP, and Iran's strategy of diffused pain economics. The overall picture reveals war not as a clash of ideas but as a complex accounting process in which the ultimate burden of inflation and national debt always falls on an unwitting public.