Something is different about Trump’s $1 trillion war on Iran and its stress on the national debt, Harvard Kennedy scholar says

German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, that nations should conduct themselves in a particular way with wars and debt: “National debts shall not be contracted with a view to the external friction of states.”

In other words, to maintain peace, don’t finance wars with debt.

Nearly a quarter-millennium later, public finance expert Linda Bilmes warns the U.S. is making this exact mistake in how it’s raising capital for the Iran war, encumbering the already weighty $39 trillion national debt.

According to Bilmes, a policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, the cost of the ongoing war is likely to exceed $1 trillion, swamping early projections of U.S. spending on the war, with the Pentagon reportedly claiming the first week of the war cost about $11.3 billion alone. The American Enterprise Institute estimated the costs of the war would have exceeded $35 billion by April 1—or about $1 billion per day. Bilmes said the daily costs are double those estimates, as the government does not take into account the long-term impacts of war, such as long-term veteran disability benefits and damage to key infrastructure that could ...