War

War is the wealth extraction architecture operating at full scale. It concentrates public resources into private hands, distorts policy through donor incentives, depends on media complicity and narrative management, and requires a fragmented public unable to assess costs or demand accountability.

Nobody Voted for This War. Nobody Gets the Old World Back.

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The American presidency, in the wrong hands, with every institutional check removed, is powerful enough to destroy countries and break the interdependent global systems the modern world runs on.

The Leadership

I never fully understood how powerful the President of the United States actually is until now. When that position is held by a man with no capacity for consequence, no institutional check left to slow him down, and a circle of people who know exactly how to use him — he can destroy a country.

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If America First Means Anything, It Means This Isn’t Our Job

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Every government we’ve removed in an oil-producing country was replaced by something just as bad or by chaos that was worse. We don’t have the ability to fix what we break, and it’s not our place to try. If we actually wanted to help these people, we’d find ways that work, and don’t involve destroying their country.

We are good at destroying governments. We have never successfully replaced one in the Middle East.

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The Iran War Will Not Help the Iranian People

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Every time the government says we’re going to free people by starting a war in the Middle East, those people end up worse off.1 Every single time.

We have been here before. The justifications shift from war to war — weapons of mass destruction, regional security, counterterrorism — but the humanitarian argument is always in there somewhere. It’s a reliable hook because Americans genuinely do care about people living under brutal governments. It’s just how we are. And it gets used every time.1

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Regime Change Wars: The Public Ledger

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For decades, the United States has fought costly wars to overthrow foreign governments—mostly in oil-producing countries—without delivering oil, security, or lower energy costs to Americans. This summary shows how those wars became massive public losses and private profits.

II. Scope, Definitions, and Accounting Rules

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This report is an accounting of outcomes — not an argument about motives, ideology, or intent. To ensure clarity and fairness, this section defines the report’s scope and the criteria used to evaluate costs and benefits.

Scope of the report

This report examines U.S. actions that meet all three of the following conditions:

  • The United States directly intervened to overthrow, remove, or decisively weaken a foreign government
  • The country targeted was a significant oil producer or held major proven oil reserves
  • The intervention was justified in part by claims related to security, stability, or strategic energy interests

The report focuses on modern U.S. interventions beginning in the mid-20th century, when oil became central to global economic and military planning. Earlier conflicts fall outside this scope because oil did not yet play the same structural role.

This report does not evaluate every U.S. military action worldwide. It focuses only on regime-change or regime-destabilization efforts in oil-producing countries, because those cases are most often linked—explicitly or implicitly—to energy narratives.

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III. Promised and Implied, Measured Against Outcomes

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U.S. regime-change wars in oil-producing countries were rarely officially described as “wars for oil.” Yet oil was almost always part of the background logic. The public was told—directly or indirectly—that these interventions would protect energy supplies, stabilize prices, or prevent hostile control of critical resources.

This section explains why those expectations were misplaced, and why they repeatedly failed when tested against real outcomes.

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IV. Case Studies

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The following tables record documented costs and returns for Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Post-911 wars in oil-producing countries.

All monetary figures in the tables below are expressed in constant 2024 U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Historical dollar amounts were adjusted using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation Calculator. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

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V. Long-Term Costs

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The spending documented in Section IV represents direct war operations. Combat ends, but costs continue. Veterans require medical care for decades. Families receive survivor benefits for lifetimes. Interest accrues on borrowed war funds regardless of outcomes. These costs are legally obligated. They will be paid whether or not the wars achieved their stated goals. The bills for regime-change operations extend far beyond the years of active conflict.

All figures below are expressed in 2024 dollars and represent current projections based on existing obligations.

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VI: Opportunity Costs

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Opportunity cost is what you give up when you choose one thing over another. When the government spends money on war, that same money cannot be spent on roads, schools, healthcare, or research. The cost is not just what you paid—it is also what you did not build.

This matters because public dollars are limited. Every budget choice involves trade-offs. Money spent on regime-change wars was money not available for domestic needs.

The sections above documented direct war spending ($2.9 trillion through 2022) and long-term obligations ($12.7+ trillion through 2050). This section shows what those dollars could have purchased instead.

These comparisons use documented costs for actual public programs and infrastructure projects. The numbers show the scale of foregone investment.

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