War, Inequality, and Policing: The Hidden Costs of America’s Military Empire
/War, Inequality, and Policing: The Hidden Costs of America’s Military Empire
By: Peter Marina, PhD
Across the political spectrum, many Americans are grappling with the consequences of a new and escalating military conflict in the Middle East, this time involving direct strikes on Iran. The echoes of past disastrous wars, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction, resonate loudly as the U.S. renews its interventionist posture. Yet Iran, with its population of over 90 million and significant regional influence, is not Iraq. This renewed conflict deepens regional instability, carries vast humanitarian costs, and reflects a troubling pattern of militarized foreign policy disconnected from nuanced understanding or public accountability.
Despite this, U.S. policymakers continue to prioritize military aggression and defense spending over urgent domestic needs. Billions flow into the military-industrial complex, including unprecedented aid to allies such as Israel, while critical social services at home, such as housing, healthcare and education, face chronic underfunding and cuts. This misallocation reinforces systemic inequality, fuels social discontent and indirectly exacerbates conditions that drive crime and insecurity within American communities.
The connection between America’s war-making abroad and policing at home is intimate and profound. With a sprawling military budget exceeding $1.2 trillion annually, factoring in overseas bases, veterans’ care and homeland security, this immense expenditure supports a punitive approach to domestic social problems. Policing increasingly resembles a domestic extension of militarized state power, where enforcement and control often overshadow care and justice. Understanding this linkage is essential: resources dedicated to maintaining global military dominance come at the expense of addressing the root causes of social instability, deepening cycles of deprivation, violence and distrust on American streets.
This endless military spending deepens economic inequality, drains resources from essential social services and reinforces a punitive criminal justice system rooted in deprivation and state violence.
Redirecting War Funds to Heal America
The connection is clearer than many realize. The United States spends over a trillion dollars annually on its military-industrial complex waging forever wars, maintaining roughly 750 to 1,000 overseas military bases across more than 80 countries, and providing billions in military aid to allies like Israel. This massive spending diverts resources from critical social investments at home, investments that could drastically reduce crime by addressing its root causes.
In just Ukraine alone, since 2014, the U.S. has disbursed between $83.4 billion and $119.7 billion in aid, with over $175 billion allocated by Congress, most of it since 2022. Roughly $69.7 billion of this total is military aid, with the rest going toward financial and humanitarian assistance.
That $175 billion could have made public university education tuition-free, canceled all student debt and ended homelessness several times over. The issue isn’t scarcity, it’s political will.
Israel, Gaza and the High Cost of War
According to Brown University's Costs of War Project, the United States disbursed approximately $17.9 billion in direct military aid to Israel from Oct. 7, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, the largest amount in a single year in U.S.-Israel relations. In addition, the U.S. spent another $4.86 billion on related regional operations, including naval and air deployments aimed at protecting shipping lanes and countering regional threats.
The $20 billion spent aiding Israel in one year could have housed every unhoused person in the U.S., with billions left to spare.
This vast allocation of public funds, while domestic crises like housing insecurity and healthcare remain underfunded, has intensified scrutiny over the moral and material costs of U.S. foreign policy, particularly given the scale of civilian deaths in Gaza and growing allegations of war crimes and apartheid.
The Price of War or the Cost of Care?
Ending homelessness in the U.S. would cost an estimated $11–30 billion annually, with $20 billion widely cited as sufficient to provide stable housing and wraparound services for all 650,000 unhoused people.
Permanent supportive housing costs roughly $12,800 per person per year, far less than the $35,000+ spent per person on emergency responses like jails, ER visits and shelters. We can afford it. The only thing missing is the moral and political resolve.
Instead of nurturing critical thinkers, public universities now treat students as customers, charging market rates for what should be a public good. A fraction of what we spend on war could make university education affordable and liberating.
If we truly wanted to “make America great,” we’d start by ending our endless wars and realigning national priorities toward investing in the people who live here, e.g., students, workers, families and communities, not corporations and foreign militaries.
Here’s the Reality in Numbers
· The U.S. defense budget in 2024 is approximately $886 billion.
· Overseas military bases cost between $55 billion and $100 billion annually.
· Military aid to Israel is $3.8 billion annually.
· The total military-industrial complex, when factoring in veterans’ affairs, nuclear weapons, homeland security and interest on past wars, costs $1.2 to $1.4 trillion per year, according to Brown University.
Now compare that to domestic needs:
· Medicare for All would cost $1.5 to $2.5 trillion annually in government spending, replacing over $4 trillion in current private healthcare costs.
· Making public colleges tuition-free would cost just $70–100 billion per year.
· Forgiving existing student debt would be a one-time cost of $1.7 trillion.
· Even modest cuts, say $400 billion annually from military spending, could fund tuition-free college, universal healthcare, and still leave the U.S. with the largest defense budget in the world.
Why This Matters for Crime and Policing
Crime doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sociological and criminological research shows that relative deprivation, the feeling of being unfairly disadvantaged, fuels social discontent and leads directly to criminal behavior. When basic needs go unmet, when economic insecurity deepens and when opportunity vanishes, desperation breeds disorder.
Investing in healthcare, education, housing and mental health services isn’t just moral, it’s practical. It’s crime prevention at the root.
As sociologists like Loïc Wacquant have shown, policing often functions not to ensure justice, but to manage the social consequences of neoliberal austerity, warehousing the poor and racialized populations in place of real economic investment.
When inequality declines, the role of police can shift. No longer simply agents of control, they can instead serve as defenders of human rights, protecting communities from exploitation and abuse—not managing their despair.
While Congress finds hundreds of billions for war, with little debate, it refuses to adequately fund basic human needs. This is not accidental. It is the logic of empire: punish the poor at home, dominate others abroad and call it peace.
Why hasn’t this transformation occurred?
Because the military-industrial complex is deeply embedded in American capitalism and imperialism. It is profitable, politically untouchable, and aggressively defended by both parties. Corporate lobbying, media spin and anti-“socialism” propaganda ensure that even modest reforms are blocked.
Foreign policy doesn’t serve ordinary Americans, rather, it serves defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing, and the maintenance of American empire.
Final Call
Cutting military spending and redirecting those funds to social programs isn’t utopian—it’s entirely doable. If the people demand it, it can happen.
Let’s stop following leaders who profit from war, and instead become leaders in our own communities building peace through justice, not bombs.
Dr. Peter Marina is a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. Along with his father, (retired) Lieutenant Pedro Marina, he teaches human rights policing to law enforcement professionals throughout the United States. He is author of the Human Rights Policing: Reimagining Law Enforcement in the 21st Century with Routledge Press (2022).
