U.S. War Costs by Party: The 2026 Update

A year ago, we followed the money on 50 years of American wars. We found a clear pattern: Republican presidents keep starting the most expensive wars—by trillions of dollars. You can read that original breakdown here.

Since then, a new administration has started two more. So we added up the numbers again—using Brown University's Costs of War Project, a research team that counts not just the bombs and ships but the long bill that comes after: caring for wounded veterans, rebuilding what got destroyed, and the interest we pay on the money we borrowed to fight. We also used the Pentagon's own cost reports to Congress and outside budget experts.

The pattern didn't just hold. It got worse.

Closing the Books on Iraq

First, a fix to the original list. We'd left the Iraq War open-ended—"2003 to now." But the U.S. combat role there ended in 2011, so we can close it out.

The full cost—somewhere between $2 and $3 trillion once you add up decades of veterans' health care and the interest on war debt—is the number to measure everything else against. That's what "expensive" really looks like. Keep it in mind as the new figures roll in, because today's billions are how trillion-dollar wars start.

The New Front: Venezuela

The new administration started two wars at almost the same time. The first was close to home.

Since September 2025, a campaign called Operation Southern Spear has hit more than 50 boats across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing over 180 people. In January 2026, a second operation—Absolute Resolve—bombed targets across Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, who was flown to New York to stand trial. The administration was open about the goals: shutting down drug routes and getting access to Venezuela's oil.

The Costs of War Project puts the combined cost at at least $4.7 billion from August 2025 to March 2026—and says even that is almost certainly too low. The Pentagon plans to keep forces in the Caribbean through 2028, so this number is still going up.

The New Front: Iran

The second war was much bigger, and half a world away.

In June 2025, the U.S. bombed three of Iran's nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—in a 37-hour mission that cost about $2.25 billion. The administration said it had "obliterated"—completely destroyed—Iran's nuclear program.

Eight months later, in February 2026, it started a much bigger war—Operation Epic Fury—saying that same nuclear program had started growing again. The costs climbed fast. The Pentagon told Congress the first six days alone cost about $11.3 billion. By late April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the total had reached $25 billion. By mid-May it was about $29 billion. And officials who had seen the private numbers told CBS News the real figure was closer to $50 billion—almost double what the public was told—once you count the bombs and missiles that have to be replaced, the two dozen drones that got shot down, and the cost of keeping troops in the region for two months.

The fighting has stopped for now—but just barely. There's a rough 14-point ceasefire deal on paper. It's been signed electronically, but it isn't final, and either side can still walk away. One piece of it: a $300 billion plan to rebuild Iran's economy, backed by the United States. Read that carefully. "U.S.-backed" doesn't mean U.S. taxpayers pay all $300 billion—nobody has said yet how much of it America would actually cover. But it's a real possible cost down the road, on top of the bombs we've already dropped.

The Updated Tally: The Last 30 Years (1995–Present)

This time we're looking at just the last 30 years. So the older wars from the first article—Reagan's invasions of Grenada and Lebanon, the Panama invasion, and the first Gulf War—drop off the list, and the two new wars take their place.

In about a year, one administration has run up somewhere between $35 and $55 billion in new war spending—and both wars are still going, with the bills still growing. The pattern from last year's article is playing out again, right in front of us.

The Other War Bill: Higher Prices at Home

There's one more cost worth talking about—but it needs an honest warning label.

The war with Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz—a narrow stretch of sea that about a quarter of the world's shipped oil has to pass through. The International Energy Agency called it the biggest oil supply shock in the history of the global market. The price of oil jumped about 40 percent above where it was before the war. Economists—including some at the Federal Reserve—figure that price spike could add about 0.6 points to U.S. inflation in 2026, which means higher prices on all kinds of everyday things. One study put the total economic damage as high as $210 billion.

Here's the honest part: that's an apples-to-oranges comparison. The $210 billion isn't money the government spent. It's the damage to the wider economy—higher gas prices, costlier groceries, slower growth. That's a different kind of cost than the bombs and ships in the table above. You can't just add the two together. They measure different things.

But it's worth pointing out, because every war comes with this second, hidden bill. The money Congress votes to spend is only the part we can see. The extra you pay at the gas pump, the interest on the money we borrowed, the higher prices at the grocery store—those are real costs of war too. They just never show up in the Pentagon's budget.

Why It Still Matters

War doesn't just cost lives. It uses up money that could have gone to health care, schools, roads, or paying down the national debt. And it charges us twice: once in the trillions we borrow, and again in the higher prices we all quietly pay.

We're often told Republicans are the party that's careful with money and tough on defense. But the record keeps saying something different. A year ago, this was history. Today, it's the headlines.

Final Thought

The next time someone tells you that starting a war is what strong leadership looks like, ask one simple question: Who actually pays for it? Because the people who make these decisions are almost never the ones who pick up the tab—not at the Treasury, and not at the gas pump.