That’s the best estimate of what US citizens are paying for the wholly illegal war with Iran.
They may not notice. Since 2023, the US has contributed at least $30 billion to support Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza. And even that’s no big deal when we think about the USA’s total annual military expenditure – now exceeding an astonishing $1 trillion.
There are 343 million US citizens. I know it doesn’t quite work like this, but that $1 trillion is the equivalent of almost $3,000 a citizen. In a country where 37 million people are living in poverty, with the highest child poverty rate of all western economies (we come second in that shameful league table, by the way), that’s just mad.
We’re obviously not quite as insane as Trump’s America. We’re the sixth highest spender on defence after the US, China, Russia, Germany and India) and are committed to raising that percentage of GDP (from 2.3% to 2.5%) by next year. Starmer is hoping to get that up to 3% by 2029.
That’s primarily to play our part in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. And this makes good sense — unlike the billions we squander year after year in maintaining our so-called ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent. The cost of replacing our current Vanguard submarines will be at least £50 billion, with CND calculating that the final cost (including upgrading our Trident missile system) will be more than £200 million over the next decade.
These decisions are all made in the name of national security. That militaristic definition still holds absolute sway, though ever-increasing expenditure on security services (including cyber-security) make up an ever-higher percentage of that total.
Addressing the climate crisis, even now, does not fall within the definition of national security. Even though there is no greater risk to the long-term security of humankind than the ever-more plausible threat of runaway climate breakdown.
We all know why: the so-called ‘tragedy of the horizon’ (we can barely make sense of the present let alone the future); the stranglehold that the fossil fuel industry still has on the vast majority of politicians and media; ignorance, apathy, greed — you name it, climate deniers feed on it.
But the opportunity costs of climate breakdown are already beginning to kick in, as recognised most recently by the Joint Intelligence Committee (bringing together all the top dogs in MI5, MI6, MoD and so on). Its recent report ‘Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security’) was initially suppressed by the Prime Minister, with the government finally forced to publish a heavily edited version only after a Freedom of Information request.
The report basically warns ministers that we’ve never been more vulnerable to climate-induced shocks of one kind or another, but most particularly, in terms of food supply chains, disrupted by extreme weather.
Or, of course, by war. How long will it be before Trump’s $1 billion-a-day war in Iran impacts food prices? The Gulf region handles more than a third of all global trade in fertilisers, and prices have been rocketing since the weekend.
What a fitting moment for the UK Government to be cutting back on its commitment to International Climate Finance, as revealed recently by Fiona Harvey in the Guardian. What does the Joint Intelligence Committee know about these things anyway?
It’s almost impossible to plumb the depths of this collective insanity.
