We Spend Almost a Trillion Yearly on War. That’s Insane.

Donald Trump is setting Iran and the world on fire. And there’s every reason to think he’ll keep escalating abroad as his regime gets weaker and less popular at home.

But we should be honest: this didn’t start with Trump. For decades, both parties have shared the same basic commitment to U.S. military dominance over the world. Fifty-five percent of House Democrats voted in favor of the most recent US armed forces budget.

Establishment liberals like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries prefer a more stable and less erratic version of empire. That’s why their objections about the Iran attack are about process and “strategic clarity,” not a break with the underlying goal of U.S. supremacy. For her part, Kamala Harris on the campaign trail promised to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

What almost never gets seriously questioned in mainstream US politics is the premise itself: that Washington has the right to bomb, invade, or attack any country across the globe whenever it decides it has a sufficiently good reason. There are important exceptions — Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, James Talarico, and others have taken clearer antiwar stances.

But it’s not enough just to oppose this war on Iran. Nor is it enough to demand an end to US aid to Israel. As long as the United States spends almost $1 trillion a year on the military, there will be overwhelming institutional and political pressure to use that machine, justify that machine, and keep expanding that machine — while insisting that there’s no money at home to make life affordable for working people.

Anti-MAGA forces need to stop treating military-budget cuts like a fringe talking point. In the midterms and in 2028, we should agitate for serious reforms to the US war machine. What’s a reasonable-but-ambitious starting point? Cut the armed forces’ $886 billion budget in half.

That’s not pie in the sky. A military budget of “only” about $443 billion would still leave the United States the biggest military spender in the world. But it could mark a real step away from the strategy and practice of imperialism.

Humanity needs international cooperation, not conflict. The United States’s deepening rivalry with China threatens to push the globe into another catastrophic great-power spiral at precisely the moment we need to confront actual existential questions like climate breakdown and how to develop AI slowly and ...