For decades, the war on terrorism has been the underbelly of the US-led global order. Compared to the tens of trillions of dollars circulating among G20 nations, the resources at play in the main zones of America’s conflicts are modest. More than half of Afghanistan lives below the poverty line, and the populations of Yemen and Somalia are even poorer. But although the immediate economic stakes appear paltry, the human impact of US militarism beggars description. Washington’s post-9/11 wars have taken an estimated 800,000 lives from “direct war violence,” including more than 335,000 civilians, while displacing tens of millions of people across multiple countries.¹ There is no sign that the new administration will redress this legacy.

On the question of US military intervention, President Joe Biden is likely to follow the contours that President Barack Obama set during his second term and that President Donald Trump preserved. When a ground escalation in Afghanistan failed, Obama — with support from his risk-averse vice president — moved to safeguard US service members while continuing to kill US adversaries. Air campaigns and surrogate fighters formed the new arsenal against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State. This “light footprint” strategy inflicted a heavy toll in some of the world’s least developed countries while minimizing US casualties, justifying historically high Pentagon budgets, and handing enormous rents to US arms firms.

Obama’s successor, despite promises about “stopping the endless wars,” extended these practices. Trump pulled more American boots off the ground in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia. Meanwhile, he expanded US bombings and weapons deals, and he exceeded Obama’s second-term defense spending.

Much of Biden’s foreign policy agenda remains to be determined, but when it comes to anti-terrorism policy, the new administration appears inclined to preserve the status quo of shadow wars and corporate welfare. Biden and several of his foreign policy principals participated in crafting this approach during the Obama presidency. More significantly, though, the drone campaigns and proxy militia battles will continue because, unlike the calamitous ground wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, those operations have not inflicted a domestic political price on policymakers. For any organized efforts to actually stop the endless wars, they would need to alter that calculus.