The toll from hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hit America’s southeastern coast in late September and early October, has been terrific. Hundreds have been confirmed dead, with immense damage to residences, businesses, and infrastructure. Videos online show scenes of catastrophic destruction: washed out towns, obliterated infrastructure, stranded residents. Estimates of total economic and property losses vary, though some project as much as $175 billion for Milton and $250 billion for Helene.
The federal response has been viciously debated, on broadly partisan lines. The Biden White House has claimed a robust and immediate response, while Republicans have been far more critical, reflecting both election year sniping and the fact that the affected communities tend to vote red. The mainstream media has focused on fact–checking misinformation about the federal response, while myriad claims of insufficient government support have proliferated online.
What is perhaps most notable about the debate over the response to the hurricanes, however, is how tightly linked U.S. foreign policy and disaster relief have become, especially on the right. Much of the Republican base, once the principal cheerleader for American interventionism, has become increasingly skeptical of U.S. foreign policy, criticizing, in particular, the immense sums yearly spent on war and what Jefferson called “entangling alliances.”
Even before the storms, blue-collar conservatives were already questioning how their country’s fiscal priorities lined up with a vision of “America first.” Now, as residents of the Gulf Coast see their lives and livelihoods eviscerated, many are asking why their communities are earmarked only $860 million while hundreds of billions flow to foreign conflicts and military allies. They look at the still dire situations in other areas devastated by disasters in recent years—despite promises of full federal support—and wonder if their communities would receive more aid if they were located in Eastern Europe or the Levant.
Such critiques of U.S. funding priorities have been amplified, and sometimes distorted, by politicians and pundits. Nevertheless, anger over federal priorities is coming from the ground up. All Americans, regardless of party or education, can do the basic math. According to official numbers, which are almost surely undercounts, the United States gave $60 billion in foreign aid in 2023, the vast majority of which went to military allies and proxies, while the total Pentagon budget for 2023 was over $800 billion. By contrast, less than $17 billion was allocated for disaster relief in the same year. This despite 2023 being an “historic” year for “weather and climate disasters,” and despite the government’s stated belief that climate change is making natural disasters worse and more frequent.
As military spending and non-humanitarian foreign aid continues to balloon, the United States is now involved in active conflicts with at least seven countries (Russia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and now Iran). Bipartisan plans are being prepared for conflict with China by 2027. These trends suggest that anti-war sentiment will continue to surge. It will do so not for reasons of morality, but of self-interest. If the Republican Party continues to to cultivate a working-class constituency, then the right, barring a meaningful increase in living standards (which, by some metrics, have not gone up since the 1970s), will increasingly see itself in direct economic competition with the “military industrial complex.”
Donald Trump will likely disappoint this populist right since, if reelected, he probably won’t change the spending habits of the federal government. Yes, Trump has criticized the war in Ukraine and called for a diplomatic settlement. But that war may already be nearing some kind of settlement, as Ukraine’s military and financial position continues to deteriorate, and as the White House, following the debacle of the aborted Biden-Starmer plan to green-light deeper strikes into Russia, has telegraphed uncertain support for Kyiv.
Trump, moreover, appears to a continuation of the slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon, even as he entertains the idea of war with Iran, going so far as to parrot the theory, promoted by U.S. intelligence, that Iran was behind Trump’s recent assassination attempts. Given Trump’s persistent demonization of China, he may be unable to resist those eager for a hot war with a nuclear-armed country of 1.4 billion people (which, incidentally, possesses an industrial capacity far beyond that of the United States or NATO and which will likely have home turf advantage in any conflict with the West).
Regardless of what a second Trump administration might do, however, the fact that foreign spending has become a kitchen-table issue is not going to change any time soon. Should Democrats wish to be competitive in this and future electoral cycles, they may need to reconsider the Faustian bargain they have made with the Bush-era neocons and their young acolytes. The bargain has brought wealth into the party coffers and has pulled in Republicans who favor American unipolarity and can’t stand Trump. Yet, as the Democratic establishment promotes a candidate who has demonstrated little daylight between herself and Biden on foreign policy, this bargain may cost the Democrats not only younger generations but also swing-voters who have maxed out their credit cards and see the “American dream” as dead.
Looking over the past 23 years, over which time $8 trillion (excluding 2022-2024 outlays) has been spent on “defense,” one can understand the populist right’s furious response to aid packages for Milton and Helene. One would also hope that Democrats would take the anger more seriously. Both parties should already have gotten the memo. War can be a great circus—until it comes at the cost of bread.