The Peace Dividend We Never Cashed

From "Wolverines!" to budget bloat—how military fantasies bankrupted America's future

On the Fourth of July, while most Americans were grilling burgers and watching fireworks, a group of tactical-gear enthusiasts staged what officials called a "coordinated attack" on an ICE facility in Texas. The irony was lost on no one: independence day celebrated with an armed assault on federal officers, complete with body armor and anti-fascist flags. It was Red Dawn meets political theater, except nobody could quite figure out who was supposed to be the invader.

Nobody actually yelled "Wolverines!" that day, but anyone watching the footage probably heard it echoing in their head—that battle cry from a 1984 movie about scrappy American resistance that somehow became the unofficial soundtrack to every half-baked militia fantasy since. The problem is, in 2025, "Wolverines!" doesn't sound heroic anymore. It sounds like the punchline to a meme nobody's laughing at.

That this performance of resistance happened at an immigration facility—long the symbolic battleground for America's internal contradictions—only adds to the farce. But this Fourth of July embarrassment is more than just another story of American extremism gone haywire. It's a symptom of a much larger problem: a nation that has spent so long preparing for the wrong wars that it can no longer recognize what victory—or even basic competence—looks like.

The $900 Billion Question

When someone recently compared ICE's boosted budget to "Putin's army," they weren't entirely wrong—if you squint and stack multiple years of immigration enforcement funding together. The comparison sounds absurd until you realize it's not: America now spends roughly $30-37 billion annually on immigration enforcement, while Russia's entire military budget hovers around $140-150 billion.

But here's the truly staggering number: America's total defense spending for 2025 approaches $900 billion. Let's put that in perspective:

2025 Estimated Budgets:

• Russia's military: ~$150B
• U.S. immigration enforcement: $30–37B/year
• U.S. defense total: ~$900B
• Germany's defense: ~1.5% of GDP

We're outspending our primary geopolitical rival by a factor of six to seven. So why, exactly, can't we afford universal healthcare?

Europe's Secret: The Peace Dividend We Never Claimed

The answer lies in a choice America made—or rather, didn't make—after the Cold War ended. While European nations slashed their defense budgets and redirected that "peace dividend" toward universal healthcare, robust social safety nets, and infrastructure, America kept spending like it was still 1985.

Europe could afford comprehensive social programs partly because they were operating under the American security umbrella. They chose butter over guns, knowing Uncle Sam would handle the guns. The result? Countries like Germany and France now spend around 1.3-1.5% of GDP on defense while maintaining healthcare systems that put ours to shame.

America, meanwhile, appointed itself the world's policeman and never looked back. We convinced ourselves that global stability required American military dominance, that democracy could be exported at gunpoint, and that overwhelming force would eventually solve complex geopolitical problems.

When Policing Becomes Performance Art

The "world's policeman" narrative made sense in 1949. By 2003, it was being actively exploited. By 2021—after twenty years of inconclusive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—it had become an expensive form of national self-delusion.

The wars that were supposed to demonstrate American power instead revealed its limits. Trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives later, we withdrew from Afghanistan in chaos, left Iraq unstable, and created more extremism than we eliminated. The "dumpster fires," as one observer aptly put it, burned through public support for American global intervention.

Yet the spending continued. The bureaucratic machinery built to fund endless war doesn't simply turn off when the wars end badly. Defense contractors still need to be paid. Military bases still need to be staffed. Politicians still need to appear "strong on defense."

The Price of Playing Superhero

Today's tactical-gear enthusiasts attacking federal facilities aren't just embarrassing—they're symptomatic. They represent what happens when a society that has built its identity around military dominance and heroic intervention discovers that the real world doesn't work like an action movie.

These aren't freedom fighters. They're confused civilians acting out half-remembered fantasies about resistance and rebellion, with no clear enemy except their own government and no coherent goals beyond the performance itself. They're a product of a nation that can't fix its bridges but can bomb anyone else's.

The Real Choice

But the consequences go far beyond the battlefield. For all its trillion-dollar bravado, America can't guarantee prenatal care, affordable insulin, or a working subway system. We've created a country where it's easier to get a Predator drone in the sky than a dental appointment covered by insurance. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans struggle with medical debt, crumbling infrastructure, and student loans while their government spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined.

This isn't to suggest that defense and domestic investment are mutually exclusive—but we've spent decades pretending we can have both while only truly funding one.

European nations are now being pressured to increase their defense spending to 3.5-5% of GDP by 2035—potentially forcing them to make the same "guns versus butter" choice America made decades ago. Many are resisting, not out of pacifism, but because they understand what that choice costs.

The question for America isn't whether we need a strong defense. It's whether we need a defense budget larger than the GDP of most countries to achieve actual security. Our military spending may have made us safer from some threats—but poorer, more paranoid, and less prepared for the crises we actually face. It's a complex tangle of trade-offs that most politicians won't touch, preferring instead the clean narratives of "essential security" or "wasteful militarism." But pretending the choices aren't complicated doesn't make them any less real.

When young Americans see European-style social programs and ask "Why can't we have that?"—this is a big part of the answer. We chose to be the world's policeman instead. We chose to prepare for every possible war rather than build a society worth defending.

The problem isn't just that this choice failed to deliver the promised security and global stability. It's that we're still making it, even as the fantasies that justified it crumble into tactical-gear cosplay and Fourth of July embarrassments.

Maybe it's time to ask what kind of country we actually want to be—and whether we're willing to stop paying for the privilege of being disappointed by ourselves.

"Wolverines!" was a battle cry. Now it's a warning label. The longer we confuse fantasy with freedom, the less of either we'll have left.