Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.
In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launchedย airstrikes in Yemenย (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, andย edged closer to direct war with Iranย in support of Israelโs escalating conflict.
Each of these โnewโ fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenanceโone that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.
This isnโt about national defense. This is empire maintenance.
Itโs about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupationsโwhile the nationโs infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.
The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.
What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.
War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.
Americaโs role in the Russia-Ukraineย conflict has already cost taxpayers more thanย $112 billion.
And now, the price of empire is rising again.
Clearly, itโs time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.
The U.S. military reportedly has more thanย 1.3 millionย men and women on active duty, withย more than 200,000 of them stationed overseasย in nearly every country in the world.
American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. Inย Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.
Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagonโs policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of โoperational security and denying the enemy any advantage.โ As investigative journalist David Vine explains, โAlthough few Americans realize it, the United States likely hasย more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.โ
Incredibly, Americaโs military forces arenโt being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, theyโre being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends aboutย $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.
Americaโsย military empireย spans nearlyย 800 bases in 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, โEven US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide,ย the military runs more than 170 golf courses.โ
This is how a military empire occupies the globe.
For 20 years, the U.S. war machine propped up Afghanistan to the tune ofย trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost. When troops left Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex simply shifted theatersโturning Yemen, Iran, and the Red Sea into new frontlines.
Each new conflict is marketed as national defense. In reality, itโs business as usual for the Pentagon’s global footprint, with American soldiers used as pawns in the government’s endless quest to control global markets, prop up foreign regimes, and secure oil, data, and strategic portsโall while being told itโs for liberty.
This is how the military-industrial complex, aided and abetted by the likes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, continues to get rich at taxpayer expense.
Yet while the rationale may keep changing for whyย American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad arenโt making Americaโor the rest of the worldโany safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.
War spending is bankrupting America.
Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almostย 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spendingย moreย on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.
In fact, theย Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combinedย spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more thanย $10 trillion waging its endless wars, much of it borrowed, much of it wasted, all of it paid for in blood and taxpayer dollars.
Add Yemen and the Middle East escalations of 2025, and the final bill for future wars and military exercises waged around the globe will total in the tens of trillions.
Co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, Americaโs expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more thanย $32 millionย per hour.
In fact, the U.S. governmentย spent more money every five seconds in Iraqย than the average American earns in a year.
Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesnโt have on a military empire it canโt afford.
Even if we ended the governmentโs military meddling today and brought all of the troops home, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the governmentโs creditors off our backs.
As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has beenย fighting terrorism with a credit card, โessentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.โ
War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor inย government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagonโs largest agencies โcanโt account for hundreds of millions of dollarsโ worth of spending.โ
Unfortunately, the outlook isnโt much better for the spending that can be tracked.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massivelyย overcharging taxpayersย for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, theย American taxpayer paid:
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
The fact that suchย price gougingย has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control โwe the peopleโ have over our runaway government.
Mind you, this isnโt just corrupt behavior. Itโs deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.
The bombing of Yemenโs Ras Isa port by U.S. forcesโkilling more than 80 civiliansโis just the latest example of war crimes justified as national interest.
That needs to change.
The U.S. government is not making the world any safer.ย Itโs making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. militaryย drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.
With the 2025 escalation, those numbers will only rise.
The U.S. government is not making America any safer.ย Itโs exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. governmentโs international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned thatย Americaโs use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.
Theย 9/11 attacks were blowback. Theย Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. Theย attempted Times Square bomberย was blowback. Theย Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.
The U.S. militaryโs ongoing drone strikes will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.
The war hawksโ militarization of Americaโbringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefieldโis also blowback.
James Madison was right: โNo nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.โ As Madison explained, โOf all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxesโฆ known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.โ
We are seeing this play out before our eyes.
The government is destabilizing the economy,ย destroying the national infrastructureย through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
The nationโs infrastructure is in shambles. Public schools are underfunded. Mental health care is collapsing. Basic needs like housing, transportation, and clean water go unmet. Meanwhile, government contractors drop bombs on third-world villages and call it strategy.
This isnโt just bad budgeting. Itโs moral bankruptcy. A country that canโt care for its own people has no business policing the rest of the world.
Bridges collapse, water systems fail, students drown in debt, and veterans sleep on the streetsโwhile the Pentagon builds runways in the desert and funds proxy wars no one can explain.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need ofย overhauling.
We are funding our own collapse. The roads rot while military convoys roll. The power grid fails while the drones fly. Our national strength is being siphoned off to feed a war machine that produces nothing but death, debt, and dysfunction.
We donโt need another war. We need a resurrection of the republic.
Itโs time to stop policing the world. Bring the troops home. Shut down the military bases. End the covert wars. Slash the Pentagonโs budget. The path to peace begins with a full retreat from empire.
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways.ย Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy.ย Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
This is the โunwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complexโ that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the warโone that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
We failed to heed his warning.
As I make clear in my bookย Battlefield America: The War on the American Peopleย and in its fictional counterpartย The Erik Blair Diaries, war is the enemy of freedom.
As long as Americaโs politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, โwe the peopleโ will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.
In the end, itโs not just the empire that falls. Itโs the republic it hollowed out along the way.
