These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.
The paper, which I co-authored with Stephen Semler, found that 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors. The top five alone — Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion) – received $771 billion in Pentagon contracts over that five year period.
This huge infusion of funds to arms makers comes at the expense of benefits for active duty personnel and veterans of America’s post-9/11 wars. Despite pay increases in recent years, there are still hundreds of thousands of military families who rely on food stamps, live in subpar housing, or suffer from other financial hardships.
Meanwhile, there are plans to cut tens of thousands of personnel at the Veterans Administration, close Veterans health centers, and even to reduce staffing at veteran suicide hotlines. And many of the programs veterans and their families depend on — from food stamps to Medicaid and more — are slated for sharp cuts in the budget bill signed by President Trump earlier this month.
It would be one thing if all of the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on weapons contractors were being well spent in service of a better defense. But they are not. Overpriced and underperforming weapons systems like the F-35 combat aircraft and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) have shown themselves to be quite effective at consuming taxpayer dollars, even as the run huge cost overruns, suffer lengthy schedule delays, and, in the case of the F-35, are unavailable for use much of the time due to serious maintenance problems.
The problems with the Sentinel and the F-35 are likely to pale in comparison with the sums that may be wasted in pursuit of President Trump’s proposal for a leak-proof “Golden Dome” missile defense system, a costly pipe dream that many experts feel is both physically impossible and strategically unwise. In the more than four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars spent since Ronald Reagan’s pledge to build an impenetrable shield against incoming ICBMs, the Pentagon has yet to succeed in a test conducted under realistic conditions, and has even failed in a large number of the carefully scripted efforts.
And Golden Dome is more ambitious than Star Wars — it is supposed to intercept not just ICBMs, but hypersonic missiles, low-flying drones, and anything else that might be launched at the United States.
The good news is that if you are a weapons contractor, whether from the Big Five or the emerging military tech sector in Silicon Valley, Golden Dome will be a gold mine, regardless of whether it ever produces a useful defense system.
The Silicon Valley crowd fully acknowledges the problems current industry leaders have had in producing effective weapons at an affordable price, and they have an answer — give the money to them instead, and they will produce nimble, affordable, easily replaceable, software driven weapons that will restore America to a position of global primacy.
But the new guard is interested in much more than just building new products that they can sell to the Pentagon. The leaders of these emerging tech firms — led by Elon Musk at SpaceX, Peter Thiel at Palantir, and Palmer Luckey at Anduril — describe themselves as “founders” who will drag America from the doldrums to a position of unparalleled military dominance.
And unlike the CEOs of the big contractors, these new-age militarists are vocally hawkish. Some, like Palmer Luckey, have publicly gloated about how we can beat China in a war that he sees coming in the next few years, while others, like Palantir CEO Alex Karp, have cheered on Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza, even going so far as to hold the company’s board meeting in Israel at the height of the war as a gesture of solidarity.
Even after Elon Musk’s messy public breakup with Donald Trump, the tech sector still has a leg up over the old guard in influence over his administration. Vice President J.D. Vance was employed, mentored, and financed by Palantir’s Peter Thiel, and former employees of Anduril, Palantir, and other military tech firms have been appointed to influential positions in the national security bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin and its cohort have a strong hand to play in Congress, where campaign contributions, hundreds of lobbyists, and suppliers located in a majority of states and districts give them immense power to keep their programs up and running, even in cases where the Pentagon and the military are trying to cancel or retire them.
Even at a proposed budget of $1 trillion a year, there may need to be some tradeoffs between legacy firms and new tech companies as the Pentagon chooses the next generation of weapons. The missing ingredient in all of this is the voice of the public, or strong input from members of Congress who care more about forging an effective defense strategy than they do about bringing Pentagon dollars to their areas.
When it comes to creating a defense system appropriate to the world we live in, it shouldn’t be about Lockheed Martin versus Palantir, it should be about common sense versus special interest pleading. Technology alone will not save us, as we have seen from the repeated failures of “miracle weapons” like the electronic battlefield in Vietnam, or President Reagan’s Star Wars initiative, or the advent of precision-guided munitions to actually win wars or achieve favorable outcomes from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.
Coming up with a defense plan that actually makes sense – and has any prospect of succeeding – will mean confronting the power and influence of the weapons contractors of all stripes, who now consume the bulk of the expenditures intended to promote the safety and security of America and its allies.
In June 2025, while U.S. and Philippine forces conducted joint military drills in the Sulu Sea and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, another story deserving of attention played out less visibly.
A Chinese-financed rail project broke ground in Malaysia with diplomatic fanfare and local celebration. As Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim noted, the ceremony “marks an important milestone” in bilateral cooperation. The contrast was sharp: Washington sent ships and speeches; Beijing sent people and money.
Although the U.S. has increased its military presence in the region, from reinforcing defense pacts with the Philippines to expanding freedom of navigation patrols, it continues to lag where influence is most enduring: civilian visibility and public imagination. A survey taken during the first six weeks of this year by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute warned that U.S. tariffs, short-term aid, and inconsistent engagement threaten to undermine trust.
As detailed in the paper “Charm Offensive amid the Tariff War,” the unpredictability of a second Trump administration has allowed China to demonstrate something the U.S. no longer consistently projects — reliability. China’s influence in Southeast Asia has grown because it consistently shows up. Its diplomats speak local languages, its media shapes youth discourse, and its projects, though self-interested, touch people’s daily lives.
Meanwhile, American values are often spoken from afar or filtered through the language of security. America didn’t lose soft power because China out-argued democracy. It lost because it stopped doing the hard work of showing up early, often, and empathetically.
Southeast Asia is not a peripheral theater, but a central pillar of 21st-century geopolitics. Located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific, the region is home to over 650 million people and constitutes the world’s fifth-largest economy, projected to become the fourth by 2030. Strategically, it encompasses critical maritime chokepoints. The South China Sea alone facilitates an estimated $3.5 trillion in annual trade, while 40% of global maritime commerce passes through the narrow channel of the Strait of Malacca.
In both military and economic terms, what happens in Southeast Asia significantly impacts global trajectories.
More than any other region, Southeast Asia embodies the global balancing instinct. Governments there do not want to choose between the United States and China. Instead, they seek diversified engagement: U.S. leadership without constraint, and Chinese investment without control.
The United States has long professed support for “ASEAN centrality,” but its engagement has too often been episodic, reactive, or filtered through a narrow security lens. If Washington intends to remain a long-term presence in the Indo-Pacific, it must begin treating Southeast Asia not as a chessboard but as a chorus of sovereign voices.
While the U.S. positions itself as the torchbearer of universal norms, China promises to never impose. America frequently invokes freedom, democracy, and human rights across speeches and communities. But in much of Southeast Asia, those values are no longer experienced as trustworthy exports. They are seen as patchy in application, moralistic in tone, and increasingly divorced from the everyday experiences of those listening.
In contrast, China does not attempt to export a values system. China’s approach is pragmatic: it delivers infrastructure, educational exchanges, and economic tools, often wrapped in language that stresses sovereignty, partnership, and mutual respect.
While the U.S. lectures and reiterates its commitment to maritime security and freedom of navigation, China listens and builds dormitories, lays undersea cables, and hosts youth forums. Chinese cultural centers are present in nearly every ASEAN capital. TikTok and WeChat are among the most used apps in the region. Even pro-U.S. elites now find themselves surrounded by Chinese-funded networks and Chinese-inspired alternative narratives. Beijing’s blend of non-interference rhetoric and strategic investment is winning regional favor, leaving the U.S. struggling to keep pace.
Of course, China’s soft power model is not without contradictions. Its Belt and Road financing has been criticized for opaque terms and unsustainable debt; its infrastructure projects have sometimes triggered labor abuses, poor community consultation, and environmental degradation, from Laos’s rail corridor to dam-induced displacements in Cambodia. In Indonesia, projects like Mandalika and Rempang have sparked protests over forced evictions and inadequate compensation. China’s non-interference rhetoric often masks accountability gaps.
Its soft power works, but it doesn’t escape scrutiny — it simply operates with a more convenient value proposition that prioritizes state-to-state relationships over societal alignment.
The issue here is not that U.S. values are less worthy — it’s that they are no longer visible, culturally translated, or institutionally embedded in the region. This is not a call for abandoning American principles. Rather, it is a wake-up call that principles unaccompanied by presence quickly become noise.
The good news is that Southeast Asia hasn’t closed the door. The United States doesn’t need to replicate China’s model, but it must re-enter the competition for public imagination before the next generation decides America is no longer part of their future. Soft power isn’t built on slogans, but earned through people, programs, and sustained storytelling.
If the United States hopes to reclaim influence in Southeast Asia, it must stop leaning solely on security alliances and start increasing its efforts to connect on a deeper, more human level. Despite DOGE’s push to reduce State Department staff and departments, there remains bipartisan and strategic momentum in Washington to reassess and potentially reverse course on soft-power investment.
Analysts warn that cuts to U.S. development aid have created a vacuum that rival powers — particularly China — are keen to fill. Even modest increases in funding or targeted initiatives could yield outsized returns by strengthening people-to-people ties, reinforcing democratic norms, and enhancing America’s long-term standing in the region.
To do this, Washington needs to significantly scale up its soft-power efforts. This includes reversing cuts to the Fulbright Program, investing more in the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, and the Peace Corps, which have long fostered educational and cultural exchange in the region (though the administration's recent crackdown on foreign students coming to study here certainly hasn't helped).
Establishing a Southeast Asia Public Engagement Office — staffed with regional experts and youth communicators — would allow for more targeted outreach. Reviving American cultural centers, expanding book donation programs, and launching tech initiatives in everyday public spaces beyond the embassy will help the U.S. connect more deeply across the region.
While the U.S. has strong security ties in Southeast Asia, military presence alone doesn’t build lasting influence. Real credibility comes from soft power. Deterrence can prevent conflict, but it doesn’t inspire loyalty or a shared sense of purpose. If Washington hopes to remain a credible Pacific power, it must show up and become a trusted neighbor before the crisis comes.
The escalating tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan — marked by tit-for-tat arrests, accusations of ethnic violence, and economic sparring — have tempted some Western observers to view the conflict as an opportunity to further isolate Moscow.
However, this is not a simple narrative of Azerbaijan resisting Russian dominance. It is a complex struggle over energy routes, regional influence, and the future of the South Caucasus, where Western alignment with Baku risks undermining critical priorities, including potential U.S.-Russia engagement on Ukraine and arms control.
The immediate spark came in June, when Russian security forces raided alleged Azerbaijani-linked criminal networks in Yekaterinburg, resulting in the deaths of two Russian nationals of Azerbaijani origin and arrests of more suspected mobsters. Baku condemned the raids as ethnically motivated, while Moscow claimed the deaths were due to natural causes.
The fallout was swift: Azerbaijan arrested Russian nationals, including Kremlin-linked media employees accused of espionage and seemingly random expatriates, while state-backed media in Baku launched a fierce anti-Russian propaganda campaign.
This clash built on deeper tensions. Since Azerbaijan’s 2023 reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, which sidelined Russian peacekeepers and exposed Moscow’s waning regional influence, President Ilham Aliyev has pursued an assertive foreign policy. Aliyev’s sharp public criticisms of Russia over the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Russian airspace in December 2024 — in which he demanded accountability, compensation, and justice—signaled a newfound combativeness toward Moscow, marking a departure from Baku’s traditionally cautious diplomacy with its powerful neighbor.
Backed by Turkey and courted by the West for its energy exports, Azerbaijan aims to dominate the South Caucasus and serve as a critical energy hub for Central Asian exports to Europe that bypasses Russia.
Baku’s ambitions center on the proposed Zangezur Corridor, a transit route through Armenia connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and Turkey. This corridor, under prospective Ankara-Baku control, aligns with Western efforts to reduce reliance on Russian hydrocarbon export but is strongly opposed by both Russia and Iran, who fear it would bolster Turkish influence at their expense.
Armenia, caught in the middle, faces intense pressure, with Aliyev threatening military action if Yerevan resists.
Armenia’s own pivot complicates the situation. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s pro-Western government has distanced itself from Moscow, freezing its participation in the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and signaling openness to NATO membership. Yet, this leaves Armenia isolated, as Western support remains largely rhetorical while Azerbaijan’s threats are tangible. Domestically, Pashinyan’s crackdown on opponents, labeled as “pro-Russian forces,” further destabilizes the country.
Encouraged by the growing geopolitical convergence between Armenia and Azerbaijan, some Western diplomats have rushed to back Baku, seeing an opportunity to push Russia out of the South Caucasus. The EU ambassador to Azerbaijan condemned alleged “violence, torture, and inhuman treatment” against ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia, while the British ambassador expressed solidarity with the “Azerbaijani people.”
This framing is telling — both diplomats portrayed the Yekaterinburg incident as an unprovoked ethnic attack rather than a police operation targeting alleged criminals. While skepticism of Russian law enforcement is warranted, uncritically accepting Baku’s narrative — from a regime no less authoritarian than Moscow’s — is a deliberate political choice.
Although high-ranking EU officials like Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas didn’t comment specifically on the latest clash, both have called Azerbaijan a “trusted partner” for energy security. Meanwhile, NATO has deepened its ties with Baku through programs like the Defense Education Enhancement Program.
This support reflects Azerbaijan’s decades-long lobbying efforts in Western capitals. Washington DC-based think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and unofficial lobby shops like the Caspian Policy Center, some of them tied to Azerbaijani state-funded initiatives, have promoted Baku as a pro-Western counterweight to Russia and Iran.
Meanwhile, lobbying firms, sometimes skirting transparency rules, have secured congressional endorsements, with lawmakers praising Azerbaijan’s geopolitical role. Now, with the Russia-Azerbaijan rift widening, these long-cultivated networks are poised to push for even deeper Western alignment.
Some in Washington, London, and Brussels may see Azerbaijan as a useful counter to Russia, but embracing Baku uncritically would be a strategic miscalculation for four key reasons.
First, Moscow maintains decisive military superiority over Azerbaijan, including nuclear capabilities and the ability to swiftly cripple Baku's critical oil infrastructure with precision strikes. The only country that could potentially come to Azerbaijan’s aid, Turkey, is unlikely to commit itself as it has its own complex relationship with Russia, of which the Caucasus is but one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
While Moscow’s focus on Ukraine limits immediate escalation, once Russia achieves its objectives there, it could shift attention to the Caucasus. Any Western-backed confrontation would be largely futile at best and, at worst, could provoke disproportionate retaliation against Azerbaijan while further destabilizing the region.
Second, overt Western support for Azerbaijan would reinforce the Kremlin’s narrative that the U.S. seeks to encircle and weaken Russia at every turn. This would make future dialogue — whether on ending the war in Ukraine or reviving arms control talks — far more difficult. Given the existential risks of a U.S.-Russia confrontation, prioritizing a minor regional rivalry over strategic stability would be shortsighted.
Third, Aliyev’s regime is no democratic ally. His government has jailed critics, stifled dissent, and weaponized nationalism — largely mirroring Putin’s own playbook. In June, it sentenced a young researcher, Bahruz Samadov, to 15 years in jail on spurious treason charges solely for advocating peace with Armenia. Backing Baku for short-term geopolitical gains would further erode Western credibility on human rights and the “rules-based international order.”
Fourth, encouraging Azerbaijani aggression — whether against Armenia or through proxy confrontations with Russia — could trigger a wider regional conflict. The U.S. has no vital national interest in the Zangezur Corridor, but it does have an interest in preventing another war that could draw in Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Russia. Such a scenario would increase pressure from the usual interventionist quarters in Washington for the U.S. to join the fray against Russia and Iran.
Rather than taking sides, the U.S. should use its renewed dialogue with Russia to quietly push for de-escalation, making clear that Washington does not seek to exploit the conflict to further isolate Moscow. Simultaneously, the U.S. should use its influence over Azerbaijan to discourage further provocations, including threats against Armenia and Russian citizens in Azerbaijan.
The U.S. does not need another proxy conflict with Russia. Washington should resist the temptation to view Azerbaijan’s defiance of Russia as an opportunity to "win" the South Caucasus. Instead, the priority must be preventing further escalation — both to avoid another humanitarian crisis and to preserve the possibility of broader U.S.-Russia dialogue on far more pressing issues, from Ukraine to nuclear arms control.
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