Within weeks of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, oil nearly doubled in price to $40 a barrel – a spike that eventually settled down but was a factor, some economists hold, in the US slipping into recession.

Now as the US debates the merits of a war to bring down Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, officials and economists are beginning to ponder the impact of another conflict on the US and world economies.

On one point, economists and political observers tend to agree: Unlike in the Gulf War, this time around the US would be largely alone in picking up the tab – to the tune of as much as $100 billion for military preparation and the war itself. "The US is not finding much keen support for this war, so it would almost certainly have to be funded by the US on its own," says Mark Stoker, a defense economist at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

But experts differ on what impact a war would have on the world's oil market. Some economists are warning a war that stopped Iraqi oil production and threatened disruption of neighboring producers could send oil prices higher than a Texas gusher – and sink a fragile global economy.

But others say that the world's oil market is very different from a decade ago. For one thing, the world now has 6 million barrels a day of excess production capacity. And several OPEC countries – Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria, to name a few – as well as new non-OPEC producers, are waiting for an excuse to up production.

This leads some to insist that the world could avoid a war-caused downturn – provided there's enough advanced planning, and President Hussein cooperates by falling quickly before damaging neighbors' oil fields.

"If we plan right, any run-up in oil prices should be short-lived, and we should be able to keep down the impact on the world economy," says Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York.

These appraisals of economic impact have coincided with an intensifying political debate over the wisdom of an imminent war. Last week, Brent Scowcroft, a key member of the elder President Bush's administration, urged current officials to hold off on an attack. Several other prominent Republicans chimed in, prompting George W. Bush to defend his Iraq policy over the weekend. The president said he would use the "latest intelligence" in deciding how to oust Hussein.

Indeed, the administration's war strategy is still in the planning stages. And many aspects of the potential conflict's economic impact have yet to be addressed.

Of course, the US government would like the luxury of planning how others could finance a war. A decade ago, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Japan paid most of the Gulf War's cost: The two Arab countries saw the US acting on their behalf, and Japan – dependent on imported oil – supported reestablishing order in the Middle East.

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