Stephanie Savell

Stephanie Savell is co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. An anthropologist, she has conducted research on security and civic engagement in the U.S. and in Brazil. She co-authored The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life.

Now in 80 Countries, The American War on Terror Couldn’t Be More Global

By the end of 2019, Washington’s global war will cost American taxpayers no less than $5.9 trillion already spent and in commitments to caring for veterans of the war throughout their lifetimes.

Stephanie Savell
By Stephanie Savell
US troops | Djibouti Africa

In September 2001, the Bush administration launched the “Global War on Terror.” Though “global” has long since been dropped from the name, as it turns out, they weren’t kidding. When I first set out to map all the places in the world where the United States is still fighting terrorism so many years later, I didn’t think it would be that hard to

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How America’s Wars Abroad are Funding Inequality at Home

Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic.

Stephanie Savell
By Stephanie Savell
Homeless Korean War veteran Thomas Moore, 79, left, speaks with Boston Health Care for the Homeless street team outreach coordinator Romeena Lee on a sidewalk in Boston. Steven Senne | AP

In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond

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America Has Spent $5.6 Trillion on the War on Terror … and Counting

When it comes to America’s wars, more than 16 years later our generals are victorious. Not, of course, in the distant lands where those conflicts grind on unendingly, but in the one place that matters: Washington, D.C

Stephanie Savell
By Stephanie Savell
U.S. Army M2A2 and M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicles are unloaded at a pier in Busan, South Korea, June 29, 2011. (AP/Yonhap, Kim Sun-ho)

I'm in my mid-thirties, which means that, after the 9/11 attacks, when this country went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in what President George W. Bush called the “Global War on Terror,” I was still in college. I remember taking part in a couple of campus antiwar demonstrations and, while working as a waitress in 2003, being upset by customers who

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