Following the recent mid-term elections in the USA, some commentators have emphasized the Iran War and others the growing socio-economic problems of people. There is increasing evidence that internal and external factors need to be considered together.
At the more obvious level, wars raise the price of energy and other products, hurting common people. The huge US military budget, bigger than that of the next six countries combined, also leaves far less for the needs of the bottom half of the population. A budget that covers defence needs while saving about 500 billion dollars for civilian priorities could greatly improve nutrition, health, housing and education.
There are less obvious links too. Which forces push for forever wars and aggressive external policies? And aren't these forces similar or allied to those pushing unjust domestic policies? In a 1992 book, 'The Challenge of the Last Decade', I asked in the first chapter about the relationship between the deaths of President Allende and President Kennedy. I could equally have asked about the assassinations of Prime Minister Lumumba and Martin Luther King.
This raised eyebrows, as many felt events so far apart in time and space could not be related. But the same political forces, with the same tendency to disrupt peace, justice and democracy through shocking violence against highly placed leaders, were responsible. When aggression abroad strengthens the forces of injustice inside a powerful country, they can turn just as willingly against those who lead the forces of peace and justice at home.
Two aspects of the USA are well established. It has waged some of the most aggressive and destructive wars of any country, and despite abundant resources it has very high levels of internal social distress. If the two are closely related, solutions should be sought together. The hopeful sign is that once the USA gives up external aggression, it will also be on the path of reducing social distress.
Senator Bernie Sanders said in a video after the November 6, 2026 results that the top 1 per cent have more wealth than the bottom 93 per cent, while a single top billionaire has more than the bottom 53 per cent. In The Guardian in 2024 he wrote of the 60 per cent of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, and of the pain and anxiety tens of millions experience daily without serious discussion in the media.
Health experts have expressed concern that US life expectancy has fallen behind that of several other rich countries. Some researchers count the resulting excess deaths, the 'missing Americans'. A study by Jacob Bor, Andrew Stokes and others, published in PNAS Nexus in May 2023, estimated 622,534 such deaths in 2019. The number rose above a million in the following COVID years, but we can stay with the lower figure of a normal year. Another study, by David Brady in JAMA Internal Medicine in April 2023, estimated 183,000 poverty-related deaths a year among those over 15. UN data show the US maternal death rate rising from 12 to 21 between 2000 and 2020, even as it declined in most countries. Avoidable deaths in the USA are thus well over half a million every year.
The steps needed are well known in a country with so many eminent scholars. Health services must improve for all weaker sections without discrimination. Inequalities must shrink so poorer people get better nutrition. The environment and safety must be better protected, and shelter and social conditions improved to support physical and mental health while avoiding harmful addictions. The educational system needs overdue reforms too.
The bigger question is why these solutions have not been adopted, and why the situation in some respects keeps deteriorating. This goes beyond what most academic papers discuss, because it concerns political injustice. Why are billions always available for weapons but not even millions for social justice? Why can billions in tax gifts go to the rich while millions for the poorest are hard to find? A system of injustice has become so deeply established that solutions outside it are difficult to implement.
This system harms people in other countries even more than those within the USA. If it causes 600,000 excess deaths a year at home, a similar or higher number is likely caused elsewhere. The deaths from the forever wars run into many millions when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere are added up, including proxy wars. Further deaths followed from sweeping sanctions, covert and overt interventions and coups in countries such as Congo, Chile, Iran, Nicaragua, Haiti, Greece, Guatemala and Brazil, and from exports of weapons and hazardous products and technologies. Excess deaths abroad, as defined here, are those caused by the injustices of the US or allies acting under its leadership, whether through wars, coups, sanctions, unfair trade policies or hazardous exports. Internal and external excess deaths are two parts of the same unjust system, an aspect most academic studies miss.
The struggle is against the unjust establishment, perhaps the top 5 per cent, and never against the American people, who need worldwide solidarity. Because the USA is the most powerful country, its policies have worldwide impact. Activists across the world trying to stop GM crops, which can contaminate normal farming, find themselves frustrated by the support these crops receive from big business interests concentrated in the USA. The aim should never be to replace a world dominated by the USA with one dominated by China, but to create a USA, a China and a world based on justice, peace and environment protection.
There is another level of linkage. When aggressive and unjust policies are adopted externally and internally, the ethical and moral fabric of society erodes. To distract from obvious injustices, falsehoods spread and truth is covered up, and an unjust invasion may be hailed as a great achievement. This is especially harmful for the sensitive minds of youth. A healthy social-ethical fabric can protect against depression, addictions and weakening relationships. Sometimes the link is direct: the growth of opium and heroin trafficking during the USA's troubled involvement in Afghanistan led to more heroin and more addiction among American youth. But the deeper question is whether a weakened social fabric creates a hollowness of confusion and lost purpose in which addictions and depression become more likely.
The data on distress is alarming. Nearly 28 per cent of US households are single-person households. A Cigna survey before COVID found almost half of adults feel lonely sometimes or always. Nearly half of marriages end in divorce or separation, with serious effects on children. Ten to twelve million people, mostly women, are physically abused by an intimate partner each year. One in four adults suffers a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey for 2021 found that 42 per cent of high school students felt persistent sadness or hopelessness, 22 per cent seriously considered suicide, and 10 per cent attempted it. Top child health organizations have twice called for a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. If this does not prompt deeper introspection, what will?
Consider also the cost of external aggression. Brown University estimates that the War on Terror has caused 4.5 million direct and indirect deaths, an estimate that needs updating, and has cost the USA 8,000 billion dollars, about a billion dollars a day over 22 years.
Reforms are needed in all countries, but those in the USA are most urgent and can benefit all humanity. Peace, justice and environment campaigners there carry a big responsibility. Their efforts will be helped if the close relationship between external aggression and internal distress is established, and the academic community can contribute much to this. The post-election period, when reforms are being debated, is a good time for people to explore this integrated understanding.
---
The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Earth without Borders, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071
Comments