Wars always begin with bold declarations and they always end with grim reckonings.

Donald Trump declared on March 23rd that the US and Iran were negotiating “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” and that he was postponing his threat to destroy Iran’s power plants and plunge that nation of 90 million people into darkness.

Now he says peace is on the horizon. Maybe it’s true. Maybe Trump is flailing. Probably Trump is flailing.

Either way, here is a reckoning, necessarily partial, of the costs of Trump’s war as it rolls into its fourth week.

The numbers, as best we know them, after 23 days of war:

Iran: Human rights organizations estimate more than 3,100 people have been killed in Iran, including at least 1,354 civilians; Iran’s Red Crescent reports 204 children among the dead and more than 18,000 wounded. The Iranian government says more than 42,000 civilian sites—homes, schools, hospitals—have been damaged.

Israel: 16 killed—14 civilians, 2 soldiers—and more than 4,000 injured.

U.S. Military: 13 service members killed. More than 140 injured.

Lebanon: More than 1,000 killed as Israeli strikes expanded into that country. Al Jazeera

Gulf States: At least 21 killed across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain.

Iraq: At least 61 dead, most of them members of Iraqi paramilitary forces.

These are the numbers we have. The real numbers are higher, and will likely be higher still tomorrow.

The first week of the war reportedly cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $11 billion—a figure that doesn’t include the military buildup ahead of the strikes. Senator Elizabeth Warren, after a classified briefing, put the current burn rate at roughly $1 billion a day. If the conflict expands, defense spending could approach Trump’s $1.5 trillion request—a 50% increase to the defense budget, a level not seen since the Korean War.

The deeper wound is energy. Since February 28, American families are paying nearly 80 cents more per gallon every time they fill up—more than $300 million in additional costs every single day. Brent crude surged 50%, from $67 to more than $100 per barrel. Diesel is over $5 nationally, up 34% since the war began.

The IEA has called this “the greatest global energy security challenge in history.” The IMF’s managing director warned that a prolonged war poses an inflationary risk to the entire global economy. Mortgage rates are climbing amid renewed inflation threats; stock markets have fallen as concerns grow about the war’s wider impact. Trump’s administration entered this conflict having neglected to refill the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, leaving the economy further exposed. The president’s response: “A very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”

In a sense, these costs are incalculable. The Iran War that Trump chose is already a watershed event. There is no going back to normal. There is only a fight to determine the world’s imbalances of power after this event.

But already, we can see four lasting wounds to American power and standing:

1. The NATO alliance is fracturing. On March 16, NATO allies rejected Trump’s demand for military support to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump called it “a very foolish mistake,” then called them “COWARDS” on Truth Social, and declared the United States “does not need the help of anyone.” And he has continued to rail against the allies for not bailing him out of his disaster. I expect Trump to announce that the US will formally withdraw from NATO—but he will put no date on it. It’ll be a tantrum—as usual—but it will have the same effect as a formal break.

2. Europe has already grasped the reality, and made the break explicit. Germany’s government stated flatly: “This is not NATO’s war. The United States did not consult us before this war.” Japan, South Korea, and Australia also refused Trump’s please for help in his war. Spain denied the U.S. use of jointly operated airbases; Trump threatened to cut trade ties with Madrid.

3. China wins. While the U.S. and its allies quarrel, China—playing a mediation role and officially declaring neutrality—is positioned to emerge from this war with expanded influence across the Global South, in energy markets, and in the diplomatic vacuum Washington is creating. Xi Jinping may even step in to impose a peace.

4. The war was launched without legal foundation or allied consent. Senator Mark Warner, after a classified briefing, said there was no evidence Iran was planning a pre-emptive strike. Congress was not consulted. No declaration of war was sought. Trump made this war by himself. The costs to our constitutional system and to our credibility in the world as a stable, reasoned, consultative, predictable nation are devastating. Countries will accelerate their “de-risking” from the US, no matter how rich we are. Allies will hedge more aggressively, diversify their alignments, and invest in political distance as a form of self-protection. That is already happening.

These are the highest costs, to me. There is a particular kind of damage that war does that numbers cannot capture. The damage done to the country that wages war, to its sense of itself, to the norms and restraints and shared moral understandings that a democracy needs to survive—those are the worst burdens we will carry into our future.

This war was launched without a declaration, without a debate, without so much as a serious public argument for why it was necessary. Trump told us Iran was “two weeks to four weeks” away from having a nuclear weapon, adding, “and they would have used it.”

This was a deliberate, stinking lie.

A 2025 U.S. government assessment indicated Iran’s advanced capabilities—like long-range delivery systems—were years away, not imminent. The Defense Intelligence Agency concluded Iran was not capable of building ballistic missiles until at least 2035.

We went to war anyway. We went to war because Israel wanted to go to war, and this White House, unlike any before it, made no distinction between Israel’s interests and our own.

A primary school adjacent to an IRGC complex in Minab was hit on the first day of the war, reportedly killing nearly 170 children. The administration did not pause. Did not grieve publicly. Did not grapple with it. Trunp tried to lie his way out of it. There were memes.

This is what empires have always done in decline: they lose their honor in war. The dead become abstractions. They are distant, and they are Iranian, and the news cycle moves on. Americans paid more at the pump, and that, perversely, became the more pressing grievance—the war’s price in dollars, not in children.

But the schoolgirls of Minab will not be forgotten. Not by Iranians. Not by decent people around the world. Not by history.

What this war has done to our civic soul is harder to tally than oil prices. It has confirmed that we can be led into war by presidential whim, without Congress, without allies, without evidence of imminent threat, and that our institutions will largely acquiesce.

It has confirmed that the killing of hundreds of children in a country we attacked can generate less outrage than a 48-cent increase in a gallon of gas. It has confirmed that our alliance relationships—built over eighty years of sacrifice and statesmanship—can be incinerated in a Truth Social post, and that roughly half the country will applaud.

Anyone who grapples honestly with war knows that the deepest costs are paid not on the battlefield but afterward, in what the people who waged the war are willing to tell themselves about what they did, and why, and whether it was worth it.

We are not yet having that reckoning. We may not for a long time. That, too, is a cost.

—Terry