Financial Ethics and the War with Iran
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”
When the United States goes to war, God calls people of faith to respond. Christians are called to make ethical decisions about whether the war is appropriate. Are more lives saved through war? Does war produce long-term justice, etc? I would like to add another ethical consideration, economic justice. Is the financial impact of the war worth the redistribution of resources? Nicholas Kristof’s March 21, 2026, opinion piece in the New York Times helped me reflect ethically on the financial impact of the Iran War. The Iranian ability to produce nuclear warheads was a minimum of ten years away, so how might we have been spending the Billions that are expanding the budget, our nation’s budget deficit?
Kristof’s article “The $1.3-Million-a-Minute War” confirms “The Pentagon has requested $200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.” Let me provide a few examples Kristof offers for how we might have spent the money. “For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually.” “For less than three weeks of the war, or $35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.” Every two hours in the United States, a woman dies of cervical cancer. “Screening all uninsured women who need it would cost perhaps $1 billion and could save hundreds of lives…That’s less than 13 hours of the war bill.
While I am providing just a few examples of other spending allocations, you begin to appreciate the role that national financial priorities have in our lives. Our war has a global impact on care. “About one day’s worth of war spending could save more than 350,000 lives from malaria.” “For 4.3 billion, less than three days of the war bill, we could largely end the most terrible form of malnutrition, called severe wasting.” Some claim Americans shouldn’t pay for those outside the United States. I disagree, but ok, then what if we used the billions+ to pay off the federal budget deficit?
According to Kristof, “George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 put the cost of the Iraq war at $40 billion; it ended up costing perhaps $3 Trillion.” What will the Iran war ultimately cost us in actual dollars and in lives ignored? Ignoring the issue will not make it go away. God does not want the faithful to bury their heads in the sand. Instead, we are called to speak loudly about what we believe God is calling us to share, and to trust the Holy Spirit to use our words to bring about ethical change. If we remain quiet, we get what we deserve, and divine ethics will be ignored. God will find a way to bring justice, even in the most violent moments. It is our task to speak ethical truth to power.
