The True Cost of American Militarism is Far Higher Than We Know

For the first time ever, the Pentagon budget reached an enormous sum of $1 trillion this year. Worse yet, if the Trump administration gets its way, that figure will grow to an astonishing $1.5 trillion in just one year. Still, the true cost of such American militarism is far higher than either of these figures.

These numbers are almost impossible to process. The proposed $500 billion increase alone is greater than the entire military budget of any nation in the world — 60% greater than the annual military budget of China, the Pentagon’s designated public enemy number one. 

There has been some push back by key members of Congress, seeking to lower the proposal for the Pentagon’s regular budget, and block the hundreds of billions being sought through a special process called reconciliation, the same process that brought us the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — one of the ugliest pieces of legislation in modern memory. The House has passed a War Powers Resolution calling for the end of the war on Iran. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will do the same, or whether resolutions in both houses would survive a veto attempt by Trump. On Monday, the US and Iran said they had reached a peace agreement. Whether the deal will hold remains to be seen, as does whether Congress will do anything if war reignites.

In any case, the slumbering giant that is Congress is only slowly waking up. There is much more to be done, but the sheer audacity of the Trump administration’s actions has prompted real action, backed by a growing tide of public concern and active organizing.

Further inflating the military budget will come at a high price, not only in tax dollars but in investments foregone. To cite just one stunning example, the first week of the Trump administration’s war against Iran cost, according to one estimate, about $12 billion. Meanwhile, the administration’s proposed spending on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers Disease Control combined for an entire year is less than $10 billion. If enacted, the totals for CDC and EPA would be at half of last year’s levels. The United States spent more on an unnecessary, illegal war in one week than it spent on two agencies that should be central to preventing the existential challenges posed by pandemics and the climate crisis, catastrophes that have killed more Americans than all the wars of this century and most of the last.

Yet, the astronomical figures for Pentagon spending are just a part of the costs of having foreign and domestic policies grounded in militarism and global military supremacy. This week the Project on Government Oversight released a report by David Vine, John Bellamy Foster, and Gisela Cernadas that tallies the full cost of wars and preparation for wars at home and abroad. The full costs of militarized foreign and domestic policies must include the costs of taking care of veterans; the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and the Border Patrol; military aid programs outside of the Pentagon budget; nuclear warhead programs at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); and the interest on the debt attributable to past military spending, which is substantial. Taking these additional costs into account, the new report estimates that the militarized budget is already $1.7 to $2 trillion per year — before the proposed $500 billion increase in the Pentagon budget. 

Americans deserve to know the full cost of continuing with a foreign policy premised on the ability to intervene militarily anywhere on short notice, and a domestic policy that cracks down violently not just on immigrants — which is outrageous and unacceptable in its own right — but on peaceful protesters speaking out against the administration’s repressive, anti-democratic policies.

There are signs that the public will not simply sit back and let the Trump administration do what it will on issues of war, peace, and military spending. A recent Pew poll found that 61% of Americans disapproved of the war in Iran, versus 37% in favor. Bloomberg News has described the administration’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget proposal as “unraveling” in Congress, in large part due to public pressure.

All of the above doesn’t include the ultimate costs of the Trump administration’s deeply misguided war against Iran, which quickly morphed into a Middle East-wide war that has killed tens of thousands of innocent people, driven millions from their homes, and disrupted energy and food supplies, dramatically increasing costs to the average American household. And financial accounting, as important as it is, is only part of the larger problem. The United States is committed to spend up to $2 trillion on a new generation of nuclear weapons over the next three decades. Potentially trillions more are set to go to Trump’s pipe dream of a leak proof “Golden Dome” anti-missile program, which nearly every scientist not on the payroll of the Pentagon or the arms industry has concluded is not physically possible.

In short, even the huge sums exposed by an attempt to fully account for the budgetary costs of militarism at home and abroad may only be a down payment if the penchant for launching open-ended wars like the attack on Iran or Israel’s US-financed and supplied campaign of ethnic cleansing and military occupation in Lebanon continues.

It is high time for opponents of militarism in all of its forms, from wars abroad to repression at home, and from environmental degradation to anti-immigrant violence and expulsion, to join together to press for a defunding of the worst aspects of America’s garrison state, from escalating spending on ICE to funding of the Middle East war to the administration’s outrageous quest for a record military budget. And, of course, an end to the practice of financing and enabling Israel’s campaign of genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation, and aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran. Militarism fuels and helps to sustain the racism, misogyny and anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination embedded in American politics, culture, and economic relations. It’s time to fight back.

Looked at closely and objectively, militarized foreign and domestic policies don’t serve anyone’s interest except for the weapons companies, venture capital funds, and bureaucrats that are cashing in on the country’s addiction to war abroad and uncontrolled policing at home. The jobs generated by Pentagon spending pale in comparison with the jobs that could be created by literally any other use of the same money, including for a tax cut. 

At the same time, direct jobs in arms production have dropped from three million to 1.1 million over the past three decades. The surge of investment in software and AI-based weapons are likely to drive the jobs generated per amount of Pentagon dollars spent even lower.

This is a moment of war, repression, and disinvestment in basic needs in favor of the profit of the military-industrial complex. Such criminal misuse of national resources is unsustainable. The debate over militarized spending is not merely an academic inquiry or policy exercise — the quality of life for future generations and the sustainability of life on earth depend on a sharp change of course. There is no more time to waste.