Every Dollar of War

In fiscal 2025 the United States spent $916.1 billion on national defense, $377.2 billion on veterans and $45.2 billion on everything it does abroad that is not war — diplomacy, aid, the international institutions. Divided among 342 million residents (BEA’s resident population, as are all population figures here), that is $2,679 a person for defense, $1,103 for the veterans of past wars and $132 for the rest of the world: $3,914 a head. This study takes those three lines back to 1940, puts every year on the same footing — fiscal 2025 dollars, per resident alive that year — and then follows the money into the wars, the weapons, the aid and the allies that it bought.

Most figures are from the Office of Management and Budget’s historical tables, the government’s own record of what it spent, or from ForeignAssistance.gov, the State Department’s record of what it gave; the war-funding totals are the Congressional Research Service’s and Brown University’s, and every other figure is attributed where it appears. The sums are checked when the site is built.

Eighty-six years, on one footing

The Second World War towers over everything that has come since; the post-9/11 peak of $3,209 in 2010 was the highest since 1946; and the line that has grown most since 2000 is not defense but veterans: $295 to $1,103 per resident.

What each war cost, and what the peace cost

National defense outlays summed over each war’s fiscal years, in fiscal 2025 dollars — the whole defense budget in those years, not the increment the war added, because the increment is a judgment and the budget is a record.

The scale. From 1940 to 2025 the United States spent $50.3 trillion on national defense in fiscal 2025 dollars — $147,051 for every resident alive today ($50,283.3 billion ÷ 341.944 million) — $8.3 trillion on veterans and $3.2 trillion on international affairs. Per resident alive in each year the defense line averaged $2,505 a year; its peak was $8,432 in 1945, its post-war low $676 in 1948. Today’s $2,679 is above the Cold War average (FY1951–91) of $2,353, below the Reagan peak of $2,816 in 1986, and 16% below the post-9/11 peak of $3,209 in 2010. As a share of the economy, 3.0% of GDP, it is within a tenth of a point of the post-war low (2.9% in 1999–2001).

The wars. The six fiscal years of the Second World War, 1941–46, took $4.4 trillion; Korea, 1950–53, $1.3 trillion; the ten years of Vietnam, 1964–73, $4.9 trillion; the Gulf War’s two years $1.2 trillion; and the twenty-one years of the post-9/11 wars $17.1 trillion, for a population more than twice as large.

The war funding itself. Of that, Congress designated $2.0 trillion as war funding — “Global War on Terrorism” and then “Overseas Contingency Operations” — between FY2001 and FY2021, peaking at $186.9 billion in FY2008 ($896 per resident in today’s dollars). The designation ended in FY2022 and the money moved into the base budget. DoD’s Cost of War report, as cited by CRS, attributes $769 billion of the obligations to Iraq and $765 billion to Afghanistan through FY2019.

The post-9/11 wars, in Brown University’s accounting

The Costs of War project at Brown’s Watson Institute counts what the designated war funding leaves out: the growth in the Pentagon’s base budget that the wars drove, the homeland-security budget created after 2001, the interest on the money borrowed to pay for all of it, and the care of the veterans it produced. Its 2021 estimate is $8.0 trillion for FY2001–2022: $5.8 trillion appropriated and at least $2.2 trillion in future veterans’ care already owed. That is $24,060 for every resident of 2021 ($8.0 trillion, nominal, ÷ 332.5 million). By zone, $2.3 trillion for Afghanistan and Pakistan, $2.1 trillion for Iraq and Syria and some $355 billion elsewhere; by Brown’s count the wars killed between 897,000 and 929,000 people directly, about 7,050 of them American service members.

Afghanistan’s reconstruction is the best-audited piece. The Special Inspector General’s final report (December 2025) puts the reconstruction appropriation at $148.2 billion from FY2002 through June 30, 2025, about 60% of it for the Afghan security forces that dissolved in August 2021, and identifies $26.0–29.2 billion lost to waste, fraud and abuse; by the Defense Department’s count, about $7.1 billion of equipment given to those forces was left behind. That is $433 per resident for the reconstruction alone ($148.2 billion, nominal, ÷ 341.9 million).

What the defense dollar buys

Personnel was nearly a third of the budget in 1962 and under a quarter (22.5%) in 2025; operation and maintenance — fuel, repair, contractors, health care — has been the largest title every year since 1988.

What America gives the world

In fiscal 2025 dollars, FY2023 and FY2024 are the largest years in the record ($105.3 billion and $88.0 billion), and 1947, 1949 and 1951 each exceed every year of the post-9/11 wars, FY2001–21. 2025 is the sharpest fall since 1948, as USAID was closed and 83% of its programs canceled (CRS IF10261).

The collapse of 2025. Obligations, in current dollars, fell from $100.0 billion in FY2023 and $85.8 billion in FY2024 to $48.3 billion in FY2025, across 23,052 obligation records — $141 per resident, 0.69% of federal outlays ($48.3 billion ÷ $7,011.1 billion). Ukraine was still the largest recipient ($18.0 billion), then Israel ($3.3 billion, the Foreign Military Financing grant that has run at about $3.3 billion a year since 2019 — $10 per American, $3.3 billion ÷ 341.9 million). USAID’s obligations (as implementing agency) went from $35.4 billion in FY2024 to $16.4 billion in FY2025; the agency ceased to administer foreign assistance on July 1, 2025, and Congress rescinded $7.9 billion of FY2024–25 foreign-aid funding in July, most of it for USAID programs (CRS IF10261). The FY2026 appropriation for the whole State and foreign-operations bill is $50.07 billion, 3.5% below FY2025’s $51.88 billion and more than five times the $8.84 billion the administration requested (CRS R48624).

What it has always been. Across eighty years the largest cumulative recipients are Israel ($325.0 billion in today’s dollars), Egypt ($184.5 billion), Afghanistan, Vietnam, Ukraine, Iraq, South Korea, the United Kingdom, India and Turkey: the Cold War’s front lines, then the Middle East, then the wars. Exhibit 11 follows the source study’s own choice of ten: the first seven of these, with Pakistan, Jordan and Colombia.

Per resident. In 1949 foreign assistance was $586 per American in today’s dollars; in 2025 it was $141. Americans asked to guess the foreign-aid share of the budget say, on average, about a quarter (26% in KFF’s February 2025 poll); the record says 0.69% in 2025. The whole international-affairs function, aid and diplomacy together, was 16% of federal outlays in 1947–49, above 4% in most years to 1966, and has not been above 2% since 1980.

Ten recipients across eighty years

Ukraine, Israel and the world’s armies

Ukraine. Congress appropriated $174.2 billion for the Ukraine response in five supplementals between March 2022 and April 2024 (CRS IF12305) — $509 per American ($174.2 billion ÷ 341.944 million). USAID had obligated more than $30 billion as direct budget support to the Ukrainian government by January 2025 (CRS). Through June 2026 the United States had committed $68.2 billion in defense articles and services (SIG-OAR via CRS, August 2026). Congress has made no significant new funding available since April 2024; from 2025 European allies have bought American weapons for Ukraine through the PURL mechanism (about $6.3 billion announced), and FY2026 appropriated $400 million for European capacity-building including Ukraine (CRS, August 2026). Ukraine’s own military spending in 2025, by SIPRI’s count, was $84.1 billion — 40% of its GDP.

Israel. The 2016 memorandum of understanding provides $3.8 billion a year from FY2019 to FY2028 — $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for missile defense (CRS) — and the April 2024 supplemental added $26.4 billion for Israel and the region (House Appropriations Committee, April 22, 2024), which is why FY2024 obligations were $6.8 billion in current dollars. Over eighty years Israel has received $325.0 billion in today’s dollars, more than any other country. Israel spent $48.3 billion on its own military in 2025, 7.8% of GDP (SIPRI).

The year interest passed defense

In fiscal 2024 the United States paid more to its creditors than it spent on its armed forces for the first time in the record — $879.9 billion against $873.5 billion — and the gap widened in 2025 to $970.1 billion against $916.1 billion. OMB’s April 2026 estimates keep interest ahead in 2026 and put defense back ahead from 2027 through 2031.

Brown’s Costs of War attributes over $1 trillion of interest paid through 2022 to borrowing for the post-9/11 wars, and expects that interest to equal the direct war funding by 2030.

The argument

Whether the country spends too much or too little on war and the world is the oldest argument in the budget.

The case that it is too much. The United States spent $954 billion on its military in 2025 — 33.0% of everything the world spent ($954 billion ÷ $2,887 billion), more than the next six countries together (SIPRI, 2025) — $2,790 per resident ($954 billion ÷ 341.9 million residents). Since 1940 the defense line alone has absorbed $50.3 trillion in today’s dollars, and defense spending in the twenty-one post-9/11 years ($17.1 trillion) exceeded the Second World War years’ ($4.4 trillion). Brown’s full accounting, $8.0 trillion, is $24,060 for every resident of 2021 ($8.0 trillion, nominal, ÷ 332.5 million), and over $1 trillion of it was interest on borrowed money.

What it bought is audited: Afghanistan’s $148.2 billion reconstruction ended with the state it built gone within weeks of the withdrawal and $26.0–29.2 billion identified as waste; the Pentagon has failed eight consecutive audits of $4.65 trillion in assets, as Defense News reported in December 2025; the F-35’s mission-capable rate fell from 67% to 44% in four years, and its lifetime sustainment cost is estimated at $1.6 trillion (GAO, June 2026). And the bill does not stop when the war does: veterans’ benefits have more than tripled per resident in real terms since 2000, to $1,103 a year, more than ever in peacetime, with $2.2 trillion more already owed.

The case that it is not: as a share of the economy, the smallest defense effort since 1940 bar four years (1940 and 1999–2001). Defense takes 3.0% of GDP, against 9% in 1962, 6% in 1986 and 4.7% in 2010; it is 13.1% of federal outlays, against 49% in 1962. Per resident in today’s dollars it is $2,679, 16% below the 2010 peak and below the Reagan peak of $2,816; as a share of GDP it is within a tenth of a point of the post-war low. From 1962 to 2025 Social Security rose from 13.4% to 22.5% of federal outlays ($14.4 billion to $1,580.7 billion), Medicare from 0 to 14.2% ($996.7 billion), health (function 550, mostly Medicaid: $668.1 billion of $978.5 billion in 2025, OMB Table 12.3) from 1.1% to 14.0% ($1.2 billion to $978.5 billion) and net interest from 6.4% to 13.8% ($6.9 billion to $970.1 billion), each divided by total outlays of $106.8 billion in 1962 and $7,011.1 billion in 2025 (OMB Table 3.1). The defense line has fallen in real terms since 2010, from $994.1 billion to $916.1 billion in fiscal 2025 dollars, while real GDP grew 42%, from $21.3 trillion to $30.3 trillion in fiscal 2025 dollars ($30.3 trillion ÷ $21.3 trillion = 1.42; OMB Table 10.1 GDP restated with its chained price index).

International affairs is 0.64% of outlays ($45.2 billion ÷ $7,011.1 billion) and foreign aid 0.69% ($48.3 billion of obligations ÷ $7,011.1 billion) — $141 per American a year, less than a quarter of the $586 per American (fiscal 2025 dollars) the country gave in 1949 and a fraction of what the public believes. The aid record is the Cold War’s front lines and then the Middle East’s peace: Israel and Egypt’s grants are the price of Camp David, Korea’s of an alliance that now spends 2.6% of its own GDP (SIPRI, 2025). Ukraine’s $174.2 billion (CRS IF12305) is $509 per American ($174.2 billion ÷ 341.944 million) to supply a war against the only army that threatens NATO, without an American soldier in it, and about a quarter ($45.8 billion) went to replenish U.S. equipment stocks sent to Ukraine (CRS, August 2026).

The record supports both readings at once, because they measure different things. Against the economy and the rest of the budget, defense is as small as it has been in all but four years since 1940. What the record does not support is the idea that the money is the problem: it is the wars. The eighty-six years divide into years when the country was fighting — in which defense spent $17.1 trillion, $4.9 trillion and $1.3 trillion and left veterans’ bills that, in Brown’s words, “do not reach their peak until decades after the wars” — and years when it was not. The cheapest defense dollar in the record is the one that was not followed by a war.

Where this joins the series

The Federal Dollars ledger in Who Pays and Who Gets shows the FY2025 defense, veterans and international dollars by recipient — contractors, serving military, veterans, foreign governments; Federal Dollars by State, Over Time shows where the contracts and the veterans’ checks land. This study supplies the time axis those pages lack. The companion study, The Debt, the Waste and the Tax, takes the interest line from here and follows it to the debt that produced it.