When the ledger is closed on the military budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost will approach $4 trillion. Such a sum, if spent on domestic priorities, could have shored up Medicare for a generation and paid for the restoration of America’s aging infrastructure. These are difficult trade-offs to justify in a democracy. Moreover, as already noted, a sizable minority of America’s working class are victims of the very global order the United States is spending so much to sustain, the very constituency that made Trump’s presidency possible.
