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When the Debt Eats the Sword: America’s New War Within
As U.S. interest payments threaten to surpass defense spending, I find myself wondering if America’s next great battle isn’t overseas — but in its own balance sheet.
I remember the first time I saw the number: 870 billion dollars.
It wasn’t a war budget from a dystopian film. It was real — the official defense spending of the United States.
That number used to mean strength to me. It sounded like power, projection, reach. But now, when I hear that the interest payments on U.S. debt may soon exceed that defense figure, it doesn’t sound like power anymore. It sounds like exhaustion. Like an empire gasping under its own weight.
The Silence After the Storm
I grew up watching America spend money as if it came from a bottomless well. Every crisis was followed by a bailout, every war by reconstruction funds, every failure by “stimulus.”
But behind those big words — stimulus, liquidity, quantitative easing — is something very human: fear. The fear of collapse. The fear of being ordinary.
When interest payments rise above defense spending, it means something fundamental has shifted. The nation that once borrowed to fight wars is now borrowing just to stay alive.
