Restraint: A post-COVID-19 U.S. national security strategy
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of its national power. This has implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Health and economic fallout from COVID-19 makes setting realistic defense priorities more urgent
The response to the coronavirus global pandemic has severely weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of national power. This reality has vast implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Two economic factors suggest narrowing U.S. foreign policy objectives: (1) U.S. GDP and tax revenue will shrink in 2020, with no certainty about when they might recover. (2) Record deficits and debt endanger future economic growth.
Political reasons for foreign policy restraint augment those economic factors: The public increasingly perceives non-security risks are paramount, and priority will go to domestic spending that aids recovery and increases domestic institutional resilience.
Federal discretionary spending will bear a greater burden because mandatory spending programs are politically harder to cut. Since defense accounts for nearly half of discretionary spending, DoD will likely face sustained cuts.
The U.S. enjoys a favorable geostrategic position with abundant protection from rivals, so it can cut defense spending without compromising security. Indeed, ending peripheral commitments in favor of core security interests strengthens the U.S.
Ending policies bringing failure, overstretch, and drained coffers always made sense—coronavirus makes the case more urgent.
U.S. federal budget authority by category (FY 2019)
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2284"] Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
Abandon peripheral missions abroad and focus on core U.S. security and prosperity
As the pandemic demonstrates, non-military threats can be far more detrimental to Americans’ well-being than the non-state actors, rogue states, and authoritarian regimes that dominate military planning and drive DoD spending.
The decades-long pursuit of overly ambitious foreign policy goals disconnected from U.S. security contributed to the neglect of U.S. domestic institutions exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Recovering requires investment at home: education, health care, infrastructure, research and development, and policies that promote innovation and job creation.
For the past 20 years, the U.S. spent roughly $1 trillion annually on defense-related objectives (DoD, veteran’s care, homeland security, nuclear weapons, diplomacy) while domestic infrastructure in critical industries went under-resourced.
Rebalancing defense priorities to focus more on economic prosperity and public health will enhance U.S. power in the long term.
Middle East: Reduce overinvestment and military presence, which has backfired and weakened the U.S.
Core Middle East interests are (1) preventing significant disruptions to global oil supply and (2) defending against anti-U.S. terror threats. The former requires minimal U.S. effort; the latter requires intelligence, cooperation, and limited strikes, not occupations.
The Middle East accounts for just 4 percent of global GDP, yet for decades, the U.S. has attempted to reshape the region through military force, disrupting the regional balance of power, exacerbating political instability, and allowing terrorist groups to flourish.
Today, the U.S. has 62,000 troops in the region, many of them vulnerable to attacks by local militias. The U.S. is also fighting wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, largely based on exaggerated fears of Iran, a middling power contained by its local rivals.
The U.S. will be able to fund part of its coronavirus recovery by ending its participation in conflicts in the Middle East and nearby areas, such as Afghanistan and Somalia. This would free up tens of billions of dollars annually for higher priorities.
Additional savings can be had by focusing the Pentagon on its core warfighting missions and right-sizing force structure—reducing ground forces in particular, which have been swollen by these commitments.
The U.S., Europe, and Asia account for 81 percent of global GDP
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2280"] The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
Europe: Shift security burdens to wealthy allies
The U.S. has strong economic and diplomatic interests in Europe, but the continent faces limited direct military threats. Despite the fall of the USSR, the U.S. maintains a heavy military footprint in Europe in the name of securing wealthy, relatively safe allies.
This arrangement served U.S. interests when a big U.S. military presence in Europe balanced the USSR’s military might while enabling allies to recover economically and unify.
As allies grew rich and the USSR collapsed, a sensible balancing policy became a subsidy that let wealthy allies “cheap ride” on U.S. taxpayers, driving excess DoD spending while subsidizing lavish social welfare programs for European nations.
Russia is a declining power (with a large nuclear arsenal). The EU dominates Russia in important metrics of national power: 3½:1 population, 11:1 GDP, and 5:1 military spending. European economies are also more dynamic than Russia’s.
Instead of jawboning allies for shirking their obligations, U.S. policy should shift the security burden onto them by (1) ending the European Defense Initiative and (2) implementing a responsible draw down of U.S. ground and nuclear forces on the continent.
This would not only free up finite U.S. resources for higher priorities at home or in Asia, but also encourage European allies to revitalize their militaries: increasing spending, prioritizing modernization, or increasing military cooperation with each other.
Asia: Fortify Asian allies with A2/AD capabilities to deter Chinese aggression at less risk
U.S. policy toward China—the only conceivable strategic competitor—balances several key interests: deterring Chinese territorial expansion against Asian allies, avoiding war, and ensuring a fair and beneficial trading relationship.
Efforts to balance against China should therefore be based on core U.S. interests and carefully designed and planned to reduce cost, minimize escalation risks, and protect trade.
U.S. goals in Asia are inherently defensive (to preserve the territorial status quo) and are best served by a military approach of “defensive defense”: an operational concept that limits U.S. costs by encouraging allies to develop their defensive capabilities.
By improving anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities—a network of sensors and missiles—U.S. allies can deter Chinese attacks more effectively and cheaply than via investment in aircraft and surface ships that mimic U.S. capabilities.
Allied defensive capability is less threatening to China than U.S. offensive capability. Reducing the perceived threat of direct attacks, A2/AD is less prone to spark costly, counterproductive arms racing.
Pressing allies to adopt this approach will allow the U.S. to jettison escalatory plans to defend them by attacking the Chinese mainland, lowering tensions and risks of a broader war with China and allowing for cost saving on U.S. forces in Asia.
U.S. force structure: Constrained DoD budgets means more tradeoffs and rebalancing among the services
With the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, large oceans separating it from rivals, and weak neighbors, the U.S. has a unique advantage over every other nation—security is abundant and cheap.
The U.S. accounts for 40 percent of global military spending—treaty allies account for 22 percent; Russia and China account for 17 percent. The 2020 DoD budget ($757 billion) exceeds Cold War highs in real terms, reflecting a false sense of insecurity.
Reduced DoD budgets can force debate and prioritization among programs and services—between what contributes to U.S. security and what is peripheral or even counterproductive—that large spending authorizations prevent.
Geography makes the U.S. a natural naval power and trading nation. Distance from other major states means the U.S. is perceived as less threatening—unlike China, which borders other Eurasia powers.
The Navy is the key service for projecting U.S. power globally and defending commerce if necessary while avoiding costly occupations. The Navy should command a larger portion of DoD’s reduced budget.
With no nation building and a large reservist pool, the U.S. can reduce Army, Marines, and special operations forces end strength.
Mission-driven reductions to force structure generate savings on personnel and procurement, enabling savings on operational costs, administrative overhead, basing, and other support functions.
U.S. military spending compared to allies and competitors
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2284"] Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
No major or regional powers are unscathed by the pandemic—strategic thinking will determine who comes out stronger
The pandemic has hit all major powers hard, including U.S. adversaries; the economic pain is well distributed.
China announced its GDP contracted at 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, the first decline since 1976. The CCP relies on steady economic growth for legitimacy, and in a nation with almost no social safety net, job losses could breed discontent.
While earning some goodwill, China’s efforts to help afflicted nations are an attempt to mitigate the reputational damage from its early obfuscation of the outbreak, which led to the global pandemic. Businesses are also taking steps to limit their China exposure.
Record low oil prices could see Russia’s GDP fall by as much as 15 percent this year, resulting in more pressure to limit its military spending and interventions in places such as Ukraine and Syria.
Iran has been crippled by the virus. Infection has killed several of its senior leaders, and the collapse in oil prices has damaged its already shrinking economy, making this middling power even weaker.
Strong fundamentals undergird U.S. power: favorable geography; a technologically advanced society with a skilled, innovative workforce; and abundant natural resources. Post-COVID rebuilding will require focusing on these strengths to restart the economy.
The U.S. grew to become the global superpower by virtue of its productive economy; advanced technology, including nuclear weapons; and skillful diplomacy.
The pursuit of liberal hegemony—militarized democracy spreading fueled by threat exaggeration and hubris—has resulted in strategic failure, military overstretch, and a hollowing out of U.S. internal strength.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the extent to which U.S. power has been squandered. To recover its strength, U.S. should focus on the core elements of national power while avoiding excessive military projects and the overspending that entails.
The budgetary demands to recover from this pandemic will be enormous, but the fundamental sources of U.S. security are robust—and insensitive to mild deviations in military activities and spending.
Coronavirus is a terrible tragedy but nonetheless an opportunity to shed illusions and rebuild the real pillars of national strength for the long haul.
As long as U.S. focuses on its prosperity—rather than peripheral distractions—it will grow stronger at home and retain the ability to marshal the resources necessary for competition with any adversary.
This article has been republished with permission from Defense Priorities.
Benjamin H. Friedman is Policy Director at Defense Priorities and an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Previously, he served as Research Fellow in Defense and Homeland Security Studies at the Cato Institute.
Top image credit: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe join a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and his intelligence team in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 21, 2025. The White House/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump has twice, within the space of a week, been at odds with U.S. intelligence agencies on issues involving Iran’s nuclear program. In each instance, Trump was pushing his preferred narrative, but the substantive differences in the two cases were in opposite directions.
Before the United States joined Israel’s attack on Iran, Trump dismissed earlier testimony by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in which she presented the intelligence community’s judgment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Questioned about this testimony, Trump said, “she’s wrong.”
Then, after a U.S. air attack that Trump claimed had “completely and fully obliterated” key Iranian nuclear capabilities, press reports about a leaked preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the U.S. airstrikes instead had probably set back the Iranian program only a few months. The White House pushed back, with Trump himself reaffirming his “total obliteration” language. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that the reported intelligence assessment was “flat-out wrong.”
In the first instance, Trump was accusing U.S. intelligence of under-estimating a supposed threat. In the second instance, he was in effect accusing it of over-estimating what was left of this “threat” after the U.S. attack. The intelligence agencies were not in the first instance being dovish Pollyannas before suddenly becoming hawkish alarmists.
Instead, the episodes reflect Trump’s attempted spinning of the story into one in which he supposedly confronted a grave threat and, through his bold action, has eliminated it.
The administration has gone into overdrive in endeavoring to discredit any suggestion that the impact of the U.S. airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear program was not momentous and long-lasting. CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement that “a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.” DNI Gabbard asserted on social media that “new intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” while Gabbard disparaged the “propaganda media” for reporting on the leaked DIA assessment.
The pushback misses the main issues of whether the airstrikes were wise and what comes next in confrontation with Iran. Nobody disputes that the U.S. attack inflicted heavy damage. 30,000-pound bombs tend to do that. The Iranian foreign minister has acknowledged “significant and serious damage” to nuclear facilities from the U.S. strikes.
But even severe physical damage does not imply an inability to rebuild and reconstitute a program. Nor does it deny that even with severe damage to targeted facilities, there remain materials and equipment that can be a foundation for reconstitution.
The underground enrichment facility at Fordow — the principal target of those 30,000-pound bombs — has received the most attention in the post-attack commentary. That facility is so deep underground that there is good reason to doubt that even multiple bunker-busters could destroy it, although Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assesses that the sensitivity of the enrichment centrifuges to vibration means the centrifuges were probably put out of commission.
At least as important is the high likelihood that Iran, anticipating attacks, had already moved at least some of its enriched uranium to undisclosed locations. This may have included 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent that had been at Fordow.
There also remains the scientific and engineering talent that has been involved in a decades-long nuclear program and that is spread across too many people in Iran for even Israel to assassinate. That talent can be applied to reconstruction of any of the nuclear facilities, including the uranium conversion facility that Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted in adding his voice to the administration message about severe damage to the Iranian program.
Supposed timelines for potential reconstitution of Iran’s nuclear program have been thrown into the efforts to spin this story, carelessly and without foundation. Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard spoke of “years” needed for reconstruction. Trump said the Iranian program is “gone for years.” Asked whether the United States would strike Iran again, Trump replied, “I’m not going to have to worry about that,” implying no reconstructed Iranian program during the remaining three and a half years of his administration.
It is as yet impossible to make such projections that go much beyond educated guesses, and not only because solidly based projections would require on-scene observations that neither the IAEA nor the United States currently has. The timeline for reconstitution also depends heavily on the priority that the government doing the reconstituting gives to the project and the sacrifices it is willing to make to achieve its objective.
In this regard, one recalls how in the 1970s, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan declared that Pakistanis would “eat grass, even go hungry” if necessary to acquire a nuclear weapon. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, after Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, initiated an accelerated, high-priority clandestine nuclear program that brought Iraq far closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon than it ever was on track to achieve before the Israeli attack.
The administration’s spin efforts are especially off-target concerning Iranian intentions. This is the subject on which Trump first blew off a major intelligence community judgment and which determines whether warfare was ever needed in the first place to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Exaggerating a foreign threat is especially easy to get away with when it is largely a matter of intentions rather than capabilities. An assertion about capabilities might later be disproved by material evidence, whereas proof or disproof of intentions involves the more difficult question of what is inside foreign leaders’ heads.
If no good evidence of an Iranian intention to build nuclear weapons ever surfaces, Trump can claim that it was his decisive action that cowed or dissuaded the Iranians from taking that step. Alternatively, if the Israeli and U.S. attacks lead the Iranians — seeing the need for a stronger deterrent — to build a nuclear weapon, Trump can claim that this was the Iranian intention all along. It will be difficult for the public to sort out what in this story is true and what is false.
The American public has its own preconceptions that aid this kind of administration spinning, including a willingness to assume the worst on anything having to do with Iran. The administration can also exploit basic public ignorance on the subject, as indicated by a poll in 2021 in which 61 percent of respondents mistakenly believed that Iran already possessed nuclear weapons.
The relentless efforts of the Israeli government to depict Iran as a grave threat have played into perceptions held by elites as well as the public. Israel has injected scraps of intelligence into this alarmist campaign, which have involved supposedly “new” revelations that do not go beyond prior knowledge, or that are circumstantial observations that require a chain of worst-case assumptions to connect them to a supposed Iranian decision to build a bomb.
Israel has demonstrated through its offensive operations how extensive is its intelligence penetration of Iran. If the thin gruel it has offered about a supposed Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon is the best it can come up with, this thinness is itself evidence that Iran had made no such decision.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for more than three decades that Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon. Although even a broken clock is correct twice each day, to believe what Netanyahu says about Iranian nuclear matters is to disregard how wrong he has been for so long. It also disregards how slanted any Israeli intelligence revelations on this subject are sure to be, given what has been the strong Israeli objective to get the United States involved in a war on Iran.
It is safe to assume that any intelligence Israel offers is a small fraction of what it has collected on the subject, carefully selected to support its effort to drag the United States into war. That is called cherry-picking. Americans should understand this concept, given that 22 years ago they were the targets of a similar tendentious use of intelligence to sell the invasion of Iraq, an episode I have recounted at length elsewhere.
The recent statements by Ratcliffe and Gabbard intended to sustain Trump’s assertions of “obliteration” are another instance of cherry-picking. The statements are not assessments. When Ratcliffe, for example, cites “new intelligence” that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,” this says nothing about what has not been destroyed and what is the reconstitution potential of the entire Iranian nuclear program.
Trump earlier had been aiming for an agreement with Iran that he could tout as a “better deal” than what Barack Obama had achieved. But now that Netanyahu has sucked him into warfare with Iran, Trump says, “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.” He will find it hard to ignore evidence of continued Iranian nuclear capabilities and to brush aside U.S. intelligence assessments on that subject.
Trump will feel pressure to deal with those capabilities, and he will have difficulty sticking to his prediction that he will not have to worry about additional strikes on Iran. The pressure will come especially from the Israeli government, whose objective of having the United States militarily engaged against Iran will continue and whose defense minister, Israel Katz, is talking about an “enforcement policy” involving further attacks against Iran.
Meanwhile, the intelligence task of monitoring what remains of the Iranian nuclear program will be more difficult than ever. There is no substitute for on-site monitoring by international inspectors, especially the intrusive sort provided for in the comprehensive agreement that Iran signed in 2015 and that Trump abandoned three years later. Iran, angry with the IAEA for failing to condemn formally the Israeli and U.S. attacks and suspecting the agency of providing information to Israel that has facilitated Israeli attacks and assassinations, is in no hurry to restore the inspectors’ access.
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Top photo credit: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (President of the Russian Federation/Wikimedia Commons); U.S. President Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (Wikimedia Commons)
The recent conflict, a direct confrontation that pitted Iran against Israel and drew in U.S. B-2 bombers, has likely rendered the previous diplomatic playbook for Tehran's nuclear program obsolete.
The zero-sum debates concerning uranium enrichment that once defined that framework now represent an increasingly unworkable approach.
Although a regional nuclear consortium had been previously advanced as a theoretical alternative, the collapse of talks as a result of military action against Iran now positions it as the most compelling path forward for all parties.
Before the war, Iran was already suggesting a joint uranium enrichment facility with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Iranian soil. For Iran, this framework could achieve its primary goal: the preservation of a domestic nuclear program and, crucially, its demand to maintain some enrichment on its own territory. The added benefit is that it embeds Iran within a regional security architecture that provides a buffer against unilateral attack.
For Gulf actors, it offers unprecedented transparency and a degree of control over their rival-turned-friend’s nuclear activities, a far better outcome than a possible covert Iranian breakout. For a Trump administration focused on deals, it offers a tangible, multilateral framework that can be sold as a blueprint for regional stability.
To understand why this proposal is now the most logical, we must appreciate the depth of the diplomatic collapse.
Just before Israeli bombs rained down on Tehran killing numerous nuclear scientists and senior military commanders, U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep in Oman-mediated talks, with President Trump reportedly considering the consortium proposal, accepting time-bound, limited enrichment on Iranian soil, with the understanding that precise details would be ironed out in subsequent negotiations.
Then, the strikes began. This sequence confirmed Tehran’s deeply held suspicion: diplomacy is a prelude to ambush, and international agreements are worthless without hard power to back them.
Iran’s recent legislative move to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a direct response. It is a declaration that in a world governed by "might is right," Iran will pursue its own might in the dark. This is the new, dangerous reality. The old paradigm of constraining Iran through sanctions and inspections in exchange for easing its isolation will be difficult to resuscitate.
Practically, the consortium could allow enrichment to continue at Iranian facilities but would cap purity at 3.67%, the level established in the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. This would reverse the recent trend of enrichment at 60% purity, which is a short technical step from the 90% needed for weapons-grade.
In this framework, the U.S. proposed to help construct nuclear power reactors for Iran, with Iran able to maintain enrichment capped at 3.67% pending a final deal on the long-term location and construction of regional enrichment facilities. Sanctions would also be removed, although the question of whether removal would be piecemeal or comprehensive would be the subject of additional negotiation. Gulf partners, namely, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would have a financial stake as shareholders. Their presence, potentially including on-site engineers, would create an extra layer of transparency and assurance that the enrichment program remains entirely peaceful, reducing reliance on IAEA inspectors alone.
Forcing "zero enrichment" is, and always has been, a diplomatic non-starter for Iran that only led to an impasse at the negotiating table and ultimately to military escalation. The consortium idea bypasses this dead end. It could allow for Iran to keep enriching, thus satisfying its core demand and providing a face-saving "win" to present to the public, showcasing the preservation of its nuclear program as a successful defense of its sovereignty.
For the U.S., particularly the Trump administration, the consortium is a perfect fit for its transactional foreign policy. The president can claim he used a demonstration of “peace through strength” to force Iran into a landmark regional deal. It is a “win” that is easily packaged: Trump could claim that he brought the region's rivals together and put a lock on Iran's potential development of a nuclear weapon.
For the Arab Gulf states, the consortium model addresses some of their most pressing needs: immediate security and future energy. First, it transforms them from sitting ducks in a future U.S.-Iran-Israel standoff into deal guarantors.
Second, it provides a powerful engine for their own nuclear ambitions. To diversify their energy mixes and free up additional barrels for export, Saudi Arabia and the UAE require civilian nuclear power. The consortium elegantly solves this by creating a shared, multinational fuel cycle.
Creative proposals suggest a division of labor: Iran, for instance, could maintain its prized technological capacity by manufacturing the centrifuges, while the enrichment itself could occur in a neutral country or on an Iranian island separate from the mainland. This would provide fuel for all members while allowing each side to claim a strategic victory.
The crucial benefit for Gulf states is securing a stable and transparent fuel supply chain. This sidesteps the immense political and technical challenges of developing an independent enrichment capability from scratch, a stated goal for Saudi Arabia. For the UAE, with its operational Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, the consortium offers a more resilient, regionally integrated fuel source, reducing reliance on international markets for uranium procurement and enrichment services.
Previously, Saudi Arabia, focused on its own ambitious nuclear energy plans with U.S. support, saw little reason to join a consortium where Iran held the upper hand. However, the recent war has likely made it more amenable to such an arrangement. Iran’s willingness to retaliate, even symbolically against U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf, demonstrates its capacity to draw regional players into the conflict. For Riyadh therefore, the risk of being caught in the crossfire of another war could now outweigh the risk of cooptation by Tehran.
In a recent phone call, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signaled to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan his readiness to resume negotiations with Washington, but picked his words carefully: Iran seeks a "fair and reasonable" agreement that respects its "rightful entitlements." This language appears to affirm that while Iran is open to resuming talks, its core demand for enrichment remains unchanged.
Crucially, Pezeshkian also welcomed the support of "friendly and brotherly nations" in the process, a clear invitation for the very regional involvement a consortium embodies.
However, for all its potential, the consortium model is fraught with risk. It requires the Trump administration to navigate its own policy evolution, from an initial willingness to accept enrichment provided there was no weaponization, to the maximalist “zero enrichment” stance it later adopted. Reverting to that earlier pragmatism would mean managing a guaranteed diplomatic crisis with Israel that will demand immense political capital to navigate.
Pursuing a consortium framework also requires a high level of diplomatic ingenuity, as integrating Saudi Arabia and the UAE will involve complex negotiations to secure their buy-in before tackling the nitty-gritty of the consortium's operational structure, from its location to its day-to-day governance.
Furthermore, the risk of proliferation persists. The story of Abdul Qadeer Khan — the Pakistani scientist who stole centrifuge designs from the European Urenco consortium to jumpstart Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and run a global nuclear black market — is a cautionary tale of how know-how and critical material can escape even supposedly secure multinational environments.
The choice is no longer between a perfect deal and a flawed one, but between a pragmatic, albeit risky proposal and the catastrophic certainty of war. The consortium, for all its dangers, is perhaps the only workable idea on the table.
While there are serious doubts about the accuracy of President Donald Trump’s claims about the effectiveness of his attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, the U.S./Israeli war on Iran has provided fresh and abundant evidence of widespread opposition to war in the United States.
With a tenuous ceasefire currently holding, several nationwide surveys suggest Trump’s attack, which plunged the country into yet another offensive war in the Middle East, has been broadly unpopular across the country.
Trump’s 2024 election victory, itself, provided evidence of broad anti-war sentiment across the political spectrum given the apparent resonance of Trump portraying himself as the “candidate of peace” amid a backlash against the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. In this context, Trump’s attack on Iran represented a major reversal on his campaign promises and an election night pledge not “to start wars” but “to stop wars.”
Previously unreported polling, which I helped conduct, confirms that the “pro-peace” Trump of the campaign and election night was in tune with the attitudes of much of the country. Nationwide, people understand that another in a long series of endless wars will primarily benefit weapons makers, Pentagon contractors, and other parts of the Military Industrial Complex while harming Iranians, Israelis, and, potentially, untold Americans.
Broad opposition to war with Iran
Polling both before and immediately after Trump launched attacks on Iran showed broad opposition to U.S. involvement in Israel’s unprovoked war including among Trump’s base. Most strikingly, 85% of people surveyed nationwide said they don’t want the U.S. to be at war with Iran, while only 5% do, according to YouGov polling conducted in the wake of the bombing.
The same survey showed that significantly more people disapproved of Trump’s attacks compared to those who approved. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found the same gap between those opposed to the bombing (45%) and those supporting (36%). A CNN survey revealed an even larger 12% difference between those opposed (56%) and those approving (44%). Nearly 20% more people disapprove of Trump’s handling of relations with Iran compared to those who approve. A similarly broad gap exists between those who think the attacks will make the U.S. less safe compared to those who think they will make the country safer.
Among Republicans, sharptensions emerged amid debates over attacking Iran. Nearly two-thirds of Trump voters wanted the U.S. government to “engage in negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program.” Just 24% of Republicans surveyed before the U.S. strikes on Iran favored using the military to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, according to a University of Maryland poll. Amid celebratory reporting on Fox News after the actual attacks, Republican support for Trump’s strikes significantly exceeded that of Democrats and the general public.
Americans support ‘anti-war’ Trump
These patterns of anti-war sentiment are unsurprising for many reasons including the popularity of Trump’s anti-war messaging during the 2024 presidential campaign. “We’re going to end these endless wars,” Trump said on the campaign trail. After winning, Trump doubled down: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” he promised in his victory speech.
Candidate Trump went even further to embrace a populist critique of “war profiteering” and the Military Industrial Complex. “I will expel the warmongers from our national security state and carry out a much needed clean-up of the Military Industrial Complex to stop the war profiteering and to always put America first,” he promised during a speech in Wisconsin in September.
“We have these people, they want to go to war all the time,” he said of people embedded in the Military Industrial Complex. “You know why? Missiles are $2 million apiece. That’s why. They love to drop missiles all over the place.”
Before he started firing those very missiles, Trump clearly understood popular anger at the kind of corporate profiteering endemic to the Military Industrial Complex — that powerful system connecting weapons makers, the Pentagon, and Congress, which continually encourages increased spending on endless wars fueling profits for the Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about in his 1961 farewell address.
Research that I helped design after the election showed that Trump was onto something: An overwhelming majority of the country — 77% — agrees with Trump that “war profiteers” and “war profiteering” are a problem in the U.S., according to a nationally representative online poll conducted by ReThink Media.
Similarly, nearly two-thirds of people nationwide (64%) believe the Military Industrial Complex “profits from the continuous involvement of the US military in wars, combat, and other deployments in foreign countries.” More than half think the Complex “has too much influenceon the country’s foreign policy decisions because of its lobbying and campaign contributions.”
Echoing the Trump who vowed to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex, more than twice as many people (44%) agree “it’s in our best interest as a nation to reduce the power” of the Complex as opposed to those who disagree (19%).
These findings seem to reflect growing awareness that the weapons manufacturers and other Pentagon contractors at the core of the Military Industrial Complex have been the main beneficiaries of the nearly quarter century of continuous wars that the country has fought since the George W. Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors,” a Wall Street Journalheadline said succinctly in 2021.
More than half of the annual Pentagon budget now goes to private contractors. Five companies profit most: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (RTX), Boeing, and General Dynamics. Within hours of Israel attacking Iran, weapons stocks were on the rise despite a sharp decline in the overall stock market. A day after Israel’s attacks started, stock in Northrup, Lockheed, and Raytheon, which sell weapons to the Israeli and U.S. governments, were up between 3% and 4%. Weapons makers’ stocks were up immediately in early trading after Trump’s attacks.
Trump’s empty promises
Trump’s bombing campaign represents the complete shattering of his promises to stop wars rather than start them and to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, he had already embraced the path of endless war by making the United States a combatant in Israel’s illegal, unprovoked war on Iran: the U.S. government played an active role in defending and armingIsrael, sharingintelligence, and coordinating the war.
Whether the ceasefire with Iran will hold or not is a major question, especially given Israel’s attacks on Lebanon on Friday, which broke a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. No matter what Trump boasts about his bombing campaign and no matter what evidence actually shows about its impact on Iran’s nuclear program, the long-term consequences of the war will be impossible to know: the war could help propel Iran toward acquiring nuclear weapons. It could embolden an already unrestrained Israeli government as well as Trump toward the wider use of illegal acts of war against Iran and other nations. It could generate myriad unforeseen forms of violent blowback against and other unanticipated consequences for the United States and Israel.
While Trump may want to call it a “12-day war,” it’s clear the effects won’t be confined to 12 days. So too, Trump’s embrace of yet another in a series of endless wars has provided fresh new evidence that large numbers of people in the U.S. are opposed to war. People understand all too well that when bombs start dropping, ordinary people suffer while war profiteers get rich.
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Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
