Yesterday afternoon, I sat down for Substack Live with Jacqueline Cole to discuss the topic that’s been on my mind since the end of February: what is this war actually costing us?
Every way I look at it — from the oil price shock that’s added roughly $1.50 to every gallon of gas, to Fed rate cuts that have evaporated overnight, to investment decisions being quietly shelved as geopolitical risk soars — the bill ends up in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and possibly the trillions.
But this conversation — and what feels like my entire “costs of war” press tour (wait for the shirts; they’ll be epic) — isn’t about nailing down the one true number. It’s about sharing a way of thinking. The Pentagon is counting the cost of the bombs. I’m trying to measure the size of the crater they’ve blown in the global economy.
And look, anytime a government throws around “billions” and “trillions,” it’s easy to go numb. But once you divide by 130 million American households, the cost — tens of thousands per household — stops being abstract and becomes a question you can actually feel. These are tradeoffs you can picture and make sense of.
Jackie and I also got into who’s winning from all of this (oil companies, mostly), why I find prediction markets more useful than scandalous (really!), and what feels different — and familiar — about this war compared to Iraq.
My answer might surprise you. It’s not social media or the speed of the news cycle. It’s that this president never made his case. George W. Bush was wrong about Iraq, but he at least tried to win the argument. He made his case to the American public, to Congress, to our allies, and (infamously) the United Nations. This president simply hasn’t bothered.
And perhaps that explains something else. Political scientists have described the tendency for Americans to support their political leaders during wars and international crises. They call it the “rally ‘round the flag effect.” But right now, it’s operating in reverse.
