In the third chapter of An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith observed the following:
“In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war.”
Nearly 250 years later, shortly after Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to fire Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield, MSNBC anchor Brian Williams waxed poetic about the splendor of the attack:
“We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’ And they are beautiful pictures of fierce armaments making, what is for them, a brief flight over to this airfield. What did they hit?”
For centuries, the Western ruling classes have approached the prospect of foreign military adventurism with a reckless air of euphoria. Anybody with a working understanding of American politics is already familiar with Washington’s war games. The nature of military intervention is such that it always engenders a climate of exhilaration in the runup to a new war. This zealotry is most pronounced in the corridors of power—Capitol Hill, media bureaus, pro-war think tanks, and the corporate offices of military contractors—but it tends to grip the entire nation.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans of all races and economic backgrounds rallied around the flag. Motivated by a righteous sense of anger and a desire to avenge the 2,977 souls killed that fateful day, they embraced the Global War on Terror, even as few of them grasped its implications. Initially, these civilians contented themselves with the “amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies.” The advent of the twenty-four hour news cycle and the birth of social media compounded this amusement. It was only years later that most people would recognize the deadly limits and economic realities of U.S. foreign policy.
Today, the warfare state seems to be less and less interested in the “thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory” that Smith wrote about in 1776. Granted, the Global War on Terror started off as a project rooted in patriotic fervor, but the Iraq War dispelled that notion. Even as President George W. Bush and his administration sought to implicate Saddam Hussein for 9/11, they embraced a Wilsonian model of foreign policy built on flowery rhetoric about the promotion of democratic values. At the same time, they sought to overthrow Israel’s enemies in the region and substitute them with governments that were less hostile to Our Greatest Ally™. The excesses of nationalism scarcely provide a better rationale for American bellicosity, but the erasure of the national interest and the absence of any realism or restraint from post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy signify a marked shift. Most Americans may not feel “any inconveniency from the war,” but they don’t benefit from it either. That initial ecstasy gave way to a sense of political, economic, and moral fatigue a long time ago.
The mounting public opposition to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip provides the perfect microcosm for assessing American war fatigue. Back in July, Gallup found that only 32% of Americans back the Israeli war effort, ten percentage points less than the figure it reported in September 2024. 60% of Americans expressly disapprove of the war, with only 8% of Democrats and 25% of independents still supporting Israel’s conduct. Similarly, only 38% of Americans approve of the war of choice Israel waged against Iran back in June, with 79% of Democrats and 60% of independents indicating support for the conflict. These shifts suggest that the warfare state has lost its touch. No longer can it bank on the American public’s willingness to disregard the national interest in pursuit of occult geopolitical objectives, nor can it rely on an instinctive American desire to serve Israeli interests.
In some respects, Brian Williams’ “beautiful pictures of fierce armaments” provide the most apt description of American militarism. They capture the fleeting euphoria of a blood-soaked foreign policy tradition that stretches back decades, but which, only in the post-9/11 era, has completely divorced itself from any regard for America’s interests. At the end of his soliloquy, Williams asks, “What did they hit?” His question almost seems like an afterthought. Does it matter? The target is irrelevant. After all, the war is not meant to be won.
