Between the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the calamitous stalemate of Donald Trump’s war in Iran, the American foreign policy consensus has been coming apart. Popular support for the United States’ violent foreign policy has reached an unprecedented nadir, as Americans increasingly recognize the downsides of maintaining a global empire.

In particular, US military largesse has come at the cost of spending on domestic needs, and voters are increasingly unhappy about this trade-off. According to polling by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, 59 percent of respondents found the Trump administration’s proposed 2027 Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion to be excessive.

This new epoch has ruptured elite unanimity over how the United States should proceed with its Atlas-like standing in the world. On the Right, Trump’s Iran war has curdled support from key MAGA acolytes like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Meanwhile, socialists like Zohran Mamdani have helped mobilize the intense unpopularity of Israel’s decimation of Gaza into a movement that threatens to undo the Democratic Party’s long-standing fidelity to Tel Aviv.