Released as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on International Security Studies Occasional Papers series, this 93-page report from December 2002 examines the political, military, and economic consequences of war with Iraq. The report is divided into three self-contained chapters, with each one exploring a different facet that illustrates the potential costs of war for the United States. In the first chapter, Carl Kaysen, John D. Steinbruner, and Martin B. Malin engage in an extended appraisal of the national security strategy behind the move toward a preventive war against Iraq. The second chapter finds Steven E. Miller considering a number of potentially detrimental military and strategic outcomes of war for the United States. The third chapter, John Nordhaus offers his economic cost estimations of war with Iraq by looking at scenarios that are both favorable and unfavorable to the United States. All in all, this paper is a thought-provoking and scholarly examination of a pressing topic that often receives only superficial consideration by the mainstream media.