(Photo by Christopher Griffith) 

No matter how you view them, the numbers inspire shock and awe. According to the Con­gressional Research Service, the combined cost of the Iraq war (Operation Iraqi Freedom, in Pentagon jargon) and its companions, Oper­ation Enduring Freedom, in Afghan­istan, and the Global War on Terror, could eas­ily top $600 billion this year. Staggering as that number is, ­Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes calculated that the real cost exceeds $2 trillion. The annual congressional appropriations for the wars—­averaging $127 billion—are bigger than the global markets for soap, heroin, or gambling. Monthly spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan averaged $6.8 billion last year, according to the Department of Defense’s comptroller. That ­figure is now closer to $8 billion a month.

At that rate of burn, General Electric’s value would be wiped out in three and a half years, Bill Gates’ personal fortune would evaporate in just seven months, and the troubled Ford Motor Co. would cease to exist in a matter of weeks. If you think of the wars as a giant impulse buy using an unlimited credit card, then paying it off would require coming up with enough cash to match the G.D.P. of three Irelands or about 11 Kuwaits or the Netherlands—but only if you throw in Sri Lanka. Or if you think of the wars in terms of a country that produces nothing but has to buy about $127 billion worth of goods and services per year to sustain itself, that country would have a lot of eager customers and the second-largest trade deficit in the world. (The U.S. would still be a comfortable first.)

The biggest contractors include the usual names, like Boeing, which provides Apache helicopters at $32.7 million each under contracts totaling $20.3 billion in 2006. But the Pentagon has also drafted M&M’s into the military industrial complex—Mars received $55 million for products in 2005—along with a little company in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire: Monadnock Lifetime Products, which supplies $1 disposable plastic handcuffs to soldiers. Its 2006 revenue from sales to the military was $1.3 million.

In many cases, the D.O.D. is unable to specify what it has purchased from contractors. Asked about a $321 million payment made to Altria/Kraft, a defense department spokesperson took two weeks to explain that it was for “assorted groceries.” (Altria/Kraft was unable to be more specific.) An Army spokesperson referred requests for information on purchases made from contractors such as Tyson Foods and Dell to a public relations officer at contractor Halliburton, saying that company was the best source for this information.

Whatever the individual line items, a global adventure with such a historic price point has inflicted surprisingly little pain on the U.S. economy. One reason is that rather than using a pay-as-you-go system, the war effort is being financed largely with debt. That debt is held by the biggest players in the global economy: Japan, Europe, Saudi Arabia, and China. If there are screws to be turned here, it’s up to them.

But until something changes, the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq represent a bizarre big-box retail showcase for vast sectors of the global economy. Like some dreamy indulgent bachelor’s closet full of shiny electric guitars, the objects of war photographed for this portfolio are expensive, tangible, and exotic evidence of what $2 billion a week will buy. The U.S. will have huge inventories of these items long after the conflict is over. While much of the world may oppose U.S. policy in Iraq, a big part of the globe also has a stake in minimizing the policy’s impact on the U.S. economy. At these levels of spending, the notion of military victory or defeat is somewhat beside the point. Somewhere beyond $600 billion, it is the global economy that may need the protection of a green zone as much as the city of Baghdad does.

Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell famously warned President Bush that if you break it, you buy it. Powell was only partly correct. At last count, we’ve bought the equivalent of 10 Iraqs and will apparently buy at least a few more before we’re done.