As tensions with Iran once again push the US toward the possibility of further involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, a novel brand of anti-interventionism has swept American politics. After two decades of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both the populist right and progressive left have grown more willing to question the assumptions underpinning American military engagement abroad. Politicians as ideologically diverse as Thomas Massie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now openly criticize interventionist foreign policy, while public fatigue with the post-9/11 wars has become increasingly visible across the political spectrum. Yet even as Americans tire of foreign interventions, cuts to the defense budget are politically untouchable. Wars end, defense spending does not.
At first glance, this would suggest that the United States is entering an era of military restraint and fiscal austerity. In practice, the opposite is happening. In April, the White House released its budget blueprint for fiscal year 2027, requesting roughly $1.5 trillion for defense. That is a 44 percent increase, and the largest single year jump since the Korean war. The same blueprint proposes a non-defense discretionary spending cut of around 10 percent, with housing and healthcare programs among the targets.
Despite growing anti-war sentiment, the political impossibility of materially reducing the defense budget remains nearly absolute. Pentagon spending continues to rise, procurement programs survive repeated public criticism and even politicians who oppose intervention abroad often continue to support enormous military appropriations at home. Bernie Sanders, one of the Senate’s most reliable critics of militarism, fought to base the F-35 (a program he has elsewhere highlighted as an example of excess and waste) at Burlington International Airport in Vermont.
This apparent contradiction reveals the reality that the Armed Forces no longer function solely as a military institution designed to project power abroad. They have evolved into one of the largest systems of domestic wealth redistribution in American political life. The US does not merely use defense spending to fight wars or deter adversaries, it uses the defense economy to sustain regional employment, subsidize industrial production, stabilize local economies, train and employ the underserved and maintain a broad political coalition. In this sense, defense spending increasingly resembles a hidden welfare state. Rather than redistributing wealth through direct transfers, the state does so indirectly through military contracts, bases, supply chains and federally subsidized employment. This helps explain why anti-interventionist sentiment has failed to translate into meaningful cuts in military expenditure. Americans may be increasingly skeptical of foreign wars, but few in the political sphere are willing to threaten the economic architecture built around permanent military spending.
The modern defense budget functions, in many respects, as a form of industrial policy. Major weapons programs are often dispersed across congressional districts, ensuring thousands of firms, subcontractors and workers become economically dependent upon continued military procurement. The F-35 program depicts this dynamic clearly; production of the aircraft is intentionally dispersed across dozens of states and hundreds of congressional districts. The aircraft becomes more than a weapons system, evolving into a nationwide economic ecosystem upon which businesses, families and entire communities depend. A defense bill can more easily pass a Congress that would never approve an equivalent housing or jobs program. When redistribution is obscured behind a patriotic shroud, it can more easily survive political instability.
Military bases perform a similar function. Across large swathes of the United States, bases act as economic anchors supporting businesses, housing markets, schools, logistics networks and local tax revenues. Entire communities become structurally dependent upon the continued physical and economic presence of the Armed Forces. The political consequences of this have been felt before. Following the end of the Cold War, policymakers attempted to shutter redundant bases through the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) process. Even where military planners viewed certain installations as redundant, members of Congress fought closures aggressively. The BRAC system was largely designed to overcome this political resistance, as legislators routinely opposed the closure of bases that functioned as major employers within their districts. Military bases increasingly functioned less as purely defense assets and more like federally subsidized economic development zones.
A defense bill can more easily pass a Congress that would never approve an equivalent housing program
The economic role of the American defense apparatus extends beyond bases and contracts. The military itself increasingly functions as a substitute for parts of the civilian welfare state. For millions of Americans, military service provides stable employment, healthcare, vocational training, subsidized education and a pathway into the middle class that might otherwise remain inaccessible. In a rapidly deindustrializing America, and amid growing fears that AI may disrupt segments of the labor market, the Armed Forces continue to represent one of the few guaranteed routes to upward mobility.
Serious military austerity would not merely reshape American foreign policy, it would also disrupt labor markets, educational pathways and regional economies that have become deeply intertwined with the defense state itself. The political durability of defense spending therefore cannot be explained solely via lobbying or corruption within the so-called military-industrial complex. Defense contractors undoubtedly wield enormous influence in Washington, but the deeper mechanism resembles something closer to economic codependency. Universities receive Pentagon research grants; manufacturers rely on military procurement; municipal governments rely on defense-related economic activity; and millions of Americans depend, directly or indirectly, on employment tied to the defense sector.
The result is a coalition in which politicians, labor interests, local governments and contractors all possess strong incentives to preserve high levels of military spending. The US may no longer sustain enormous defense budgets solely because it expects large-scale war, but because the defense economy has become one of the few politically acceptable means through which the federal government can pursue industrial policy.
Comments