Why U.S. Hegemony is a Luxury We Can’t Afford
President Trump’s claim that Ukraine started the war, a claim he made on February 18th, may be one of the dumbest statements in political history. But even dumb statements may reveal uncomfortable truths.
Ukraine is hardly faultless—no government is. But Vladimir Putin’s Russia marched across its border with Ukraine with the explicit goal of conquest, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the process.
Putin started this war. To argue otherwise is absurd.
President Trump, though, has made Ukraine a priority. How he’s going about it is another matter. His negotiating strategy is chaotic, if not outright reckless, and his approach risks humiliating an ally while rewarding the aggressor. Worse, he seems to have put all his cards on the table, offering Russia much of what it wants without securing a single concession in return.
His recent Oval Office meeting with Zelensky only reinforced the sense of amateurism. Even those inclined to defend Trump and J.D. Vance had to admit it was embarrassing. The presidency has lost much of the dignity it once had, but this spectacle was beneath even that.
This is diplomacy as reality TV.
And yet, for all his bluster, Trump has done what his predecessors and critics have not ever done: he has forced Americans to consider the cost of our foreign entanglements. His claim that the U.S. has spent $350 billion on Ukraine may be an exaggeration, but his broader point isn’t wrong—the U.S. is involved in too many foreign conflicts better left to others.
And unlike his predecessor, at least he’s trying to end the war.
America’s ruling class has long insisted that U.S. military power should and does spread freedom and democracy. But in war after war, freedom and democracy never seems to show up. Instead, intervention after intervention has left behind bitterness, resentment, and new enemies—many in places where our presence was neither wanted nor needed.
The examples are too numerous to list: Korea, Vietnam, conflicts in Central America, Africa, and the Balkans.
And then there was the Bush family’s attempt to erect a New World Order with endless wars in the Middle East—wars that continue to this day. This is a region with no interest in modernity, where the presence of foreign troops is seen not just as an occupation, but as an affront—not as liberators, but as defilers.
And what do we have to show for it?
Thousands of Americans dead. Hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. Trillions of dollars spent—trillions taken from U.S. taxpayers at gunpoint. And for what?
Are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or the Palestinian territories any better off than they were in 2000? In 1900?
Had even a fraction of that money been used to pay down the federal debt, the U.S. government would be nearly debt-free. Instead, we are hurtling toward $50 trillion in debt—paying hundreds of billions just to pay the interest. And Washington wonders why American power is fading on the world stage.
You’d think, after decades of failure, the interventionists would reconsider. But they never do.
Now, their focus is Ukraine. The faces change, but the arguments stay the same.
They tell us there are three reasons we must keep spending billions we don’t have: (1) Russia is an enemy we are weakening at “low cost,” (2) abandoning Ukraine means abandoning Taiwan, and (3) America has a duty and is honor bound to defend Europe.
They’re wrong on all three.
The Russia Argument: “We are degrading an enemy at low cost.”
Russia is a failed state with oil. The idea that it poses a serious threat to the United States is absurd. Three years ago, it invaded a country with an economy about the size of Arkansas, a government nearly as corrupt as its own, and a country that was almost defenseless—defenseless because it, like much of the world, assumed U.S. taxpayers would bail it out. Which, of course, they have.
The experts who predicted Ukraine would be overrun in a matter of days were proven comically wrong. The Russian economy is in shambles, inflation is running over 25%, and Russia is now reduced to importing North Korean mercenaries to do its fighting.
Putin’s Russia is a joke. If this is what Washington calls an existential threat, there are no threats.
I don’t think the security interests of the United States are affected one iota by who rules over Ukraine—or Taiwan, for that matter.
Russia spends one-tenth what the U.S. spends on its military. The U.S. could cut its defense budget in half and still outspend Russia five to one. And unlike the U.S., Russia must defend thousands of miles of borders with Western Europe and China.
A Russian occupation of Ukraine doesn’t embolden Russia; it weakens it. Holding territory isn’t power—it’s a drain. Every empire in history has learned this the hard way. The Soviets bled out in Afghanistan. The U.S. bled out in Vietnam and Iraq. Now, Russia is bleeding out in Ukraine.
The Taiwan Argument: “Abandoning Ukraine emboldens China.”
China is a different challenge, but only in degree. It is richer than Russia, but nowhere near as rich as the United States. Its economy is roughly half the size of the U.S., and on a per capita basis, it’s not even close. spends a lot on its military, but still just a fraction of what the U.S. does—about a third. And like Russia, it has a much more complicated security problem than Washington pretends.
China shares long, remote borders with Russia and India—neither of which it trusts. But more importantly, the U.S. has over 100,000 troops stationed at a dozen military bases in China’s backyard. If China had 100,000 troops stationed in Canada, how do we think America would respond?
None of this is to say that China and Russia aren’t threats. But those threats are wildly overstated. And whatever dangers they do pose are only reduced when they get tangled up in costly imperial adventures of their own.
Yes, the world would be better off if Russia and China stayed out of Ukraine and Taiwan. But the same could be said for U.S. adventurism across the globe. The world, for example, would be better off if the U.S. had stayed out of Afghanistan and Iraq—two places that are demonstrably worse for our presence. And that’s a very low bar.
On this, Trump’s instincts are mostly correct. For nearly eighty years, the U.S. has poured unimaginable amounts of blood and treasure into wars that have been, more often than not, counterproductive—especially for America itself.
And in the last twenty-five years, the results have been disastrous.
Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, and the world is better off without him. But was it worth the cost? Hundreds of thousands of casualties. Trillions of dollars. Millions of Iraqis displaced. And U.S. taxpayers still paying for a war that ended years ago. The answer is obvious.
The same could be said for Afghanistan—except even more so.
The lesson is clear: U.S. interventionism isn’t always a force for good. America, far from spreading democracy, often leaves chaos in its wake.
The greatest threat to U.S. security isn’t some distant battlefield—it’s Washington’s insistence on being the world’s policeman while spending itself into bankruptcy.
The U.S. has a Duty “It is Honor Bound to Defend its Allies”
The foreign policy elites and Trump’s critics demand that the U.S. defend Ukraine because a failure to do so is dishonorable. And that honor, among nations, matters.
Honor? Please!
The U.S has no duty to defend Europe. If it ever did, that obligation expired decades ago. In the aftermath of World War II, when Europe was in ruins and the Soviet Union hostile, perhaps an explicit promise by the United States to intervene if the Soviets invaded Western Europe helped to maintain a fragile peace.
That world no longer exists. Europe is fabulously rich. Russia is weak. The Cold War is over—except for those still living in 1945.
Honor? Are you kidding me? NATO is supposed to be a mutual alliance. For at least forty years, American presidents have begged Europe to meet its defense commitments. None have. Only a handful have met their agreed upon 2% of GDP defense expenditures. Europe doesn’t take its own security seriously. Why should the U.S.?
When the subject of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine came up, only Great Britain “offered” to commit troops to such a mission. No other NATO “partner” has even offered. But Great Britain, one of the richest counties in the world hasn’t got the personnel or equipment for such a mission.
If Europe is so weak that it can’t even help stabilize a neighbor, what exactly are we defending?
Europe is the dishonorable party here. They aren't allies—they're dependents. They’ve built their welfare states on the backs of American taxpayers while refusing to fund their own defense.
And the US has never been a reliable or honorable foreign partner, at least not since the 1970s. In Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the list goes on, the U.S habitually abandons allies when it’s politically convenient. Trump’s critics claim they care about duty, honor and America’s alliances. In truth, they’re upset he’s saying the quite part out loud.
If we don’t stop Putin at the gates of Kyiv, he’ll soon be marching on Paris.
That’s the essence of what Trump’s critics are claiming, to which I say; “No he won’t. Who cares? And that sounds like a problem for the French to solve.”
Mutual defense is reciprocal. Europe has aggressively failed to uphold its end of the bargain. If they won’t defend themselves, America has no obligation to do it for them.
The Luxury of Empire
The demand that the U.S. insert itself militarily into every conflict, across the globe, no matter how insignificant its impact on the safety and security of its citizens has increased as its cost has skyrocketed.
This is policy divorced from reality. It is performative. American foreign policy is an indulgence of the elite. It is a $4000 Dior handbag when a $29 Target bag would work just as well.
But the Dior bag at least confers status on whomever carries it. It says to the world, “I can afford this.”
The United States can no longer afford its expensive interventions. It can no longer afford to subsidize a wealthy and self-indulgent Europe. If the U.S. foreign policy was a business it would have long ago been forced into bankruptcy.
The federal government is $34 trillion in debt and careening toward $50 trillion and beyond. It now is in the position of borrowing billions upon billions just to pay the interest on the trillions it has borrowed in the past. To say this is unsustainable is to overstate the obvious.
No nation in history has withstood the destructive pressure of profligacy. From Rome to Britain to the Soviet Union collapse is not a consequence of foreign threats but endless expansion and reckless spending. The U.S. is well on its way to following in their footsteps.
Hegemony is not strength. It’s a Dior handbag for a country that can’t pay its credit card bills. Even if it could, it wouldn’t be worth the price.
