As the 2026 midterm elections near, preparations for the No Kings Early Vote rallies kicked into high gear. Voting against one of the two pro-war parties is a high priority. Yet in the winner-take-all American political system, the congressional-military-industrial complex (Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and The Boeing Company) remains influential, facilitating perpetual war.

Here’s the bipartisan scoop from opensecrets.org. Spoiler alert: this money and politics nexus precedes the Trump administration. In other words, the congressional-military-industrial complex operated with Democratic control of the Oval Office, Senate and the House.

“Individuals and political action committees associated with the defense sector contributed $50 million to political candidates and committees during the 2020 campaign cycle, with far more going to Republicans than Democrats: $21.7 million versus $25.4 million.

“From 1990 through 2021, the sector contributed more than $365 million, with 57 percent going to Republican candidates. The sector also has a formidable federal lobbying presence, having spent $117 million in 2021 — though that’s down from a high of $150.8 million in 2008. In 2021, more than 765 lobbyists represented nearly 237 clients.”

In 2026, an American public faces an apparent alternative, politically speaking, a choice between getting shot in the arm or leg. The option of avoiding a gunshot wound is unavailable. That is no option at all.

Crafting a solution to the electoral duopoly of perpetual war requires clear thoughts about the obstacles to a political-social order that puts people’s needs first. Opposing this militarized order means standing against a force with undeniable momentum. Political-social orders of the past have had what seemed to be such momentum before change arrived.

In the meantime, Uncle Sam requires two political parties to prioritize federal war spending over programs of social improvements. The parties’ words differ. In this political duopoly, however, the parties’ deeds converge. Brief examples follow.

Here’s Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at the August 2024 Democratic National Convention. According to her, Vice President Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home.”

In fact, the vice president and President Biden were doing the opposite. That is, continuing arms shipments such as 2,000 bombs and Hellfire missiles to Israel. In this way, Israel’s genocidal campaign to exterminate Gazans has killed 21,000 Palestinian children.

Meanwhile, there are Republicans in and out of the White House who describe Democrats as leftists. Repetition creates its own meaning. Political propaganda operates this way.

Repeating such a falsehood about the Democrats as a party of the left is an effective tactic. Its effectiveness depends at least in part on the Democratic Party establishment actively fighting its progressive wing of the party. High-priced consultants facilitate this deliberate strategy.

Establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer (Senate Democratic Leader) and Hakeem Jeffries (House Democratic Leader) of New York support Israel and take campaign donations from the Political Action Committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. There are other pro-Israel PACs.  Accordingly, U.S. arms shipments to Israel continue. How is that a politically left and anti-war position?

Here’s President Trump saying the political-social reality loudly last April. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare—all these individual things,” according to him. “They can do it on a state basis.” The context is a 50 percent increase of annual war spending to $1.5 trillion.

In the meantime, states are constitutionally blocked from running year-over-year deficits to fund social spending. In contrast, the federal government can and does run budget deficits. What does this all mean?

Consider this. State spending can’t for example cover the shortfall in an estimated 20-30 percent funding cut for federal food assistance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, approximately $187 billion, over 10 years. There’s money for war but not for the poor.

Against that backdrop of war and peace priorities, America’s political duopoly is all about maintaining the global projection of military power. That is an essential part of the corporate plunder of the Global South. That is the location of resources such as rare earth minerals for commodities powering high tech industries of the Global North.

Corporate economics and politics drive foreign policy. “The United States, for example, has carried out more than 478 military interventions worldwide since 1978”; according to Luís Eduardo Fernandes, “more than 251 of these occurred after 1991, that is, after the end of the Cold War,” according to the Congressional Research Service, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2022 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2022.)

Global power ebbs and flows. Why? Exploitation isn’t a natural condition. Exploited people resist their exploiters. It is a tale as old as time.

Accordingly, the exercise of U.S. military power is changing since the unprovoked war on Iran that Israel and the U.S. began on February 28.  A brief sketch follows.

Iran’s asymmetric response since February 28 is revealing the limits of U.S.-Israel military strategy. Thus the U.S.’s regional structure of land and sea power is dramatically changing. The impacts to an economic base of that structure, e.g., allies’ energy exports to the world market, is in flux and propelling a blistering inflation, a general rise in prices, hammering the poor working classes. An affordability crisis of skyrocketing gas prices, but also the escalating costs of food, likely means angry Americans will vote Blue over Red on Tuesday, November 3.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and its oil revenues are facing an existential crisis. This Saudi governing monarchy that uses energy revenue to buy U.S. securities and weaponry, including under performing air defense systems, is experiencing a shortfall in oil revenues. That cash crunch also impacts the U.S. political duopoly drenched in donors’ dollars. The previously stable geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula are disappearing. A replacement will emerge, in one way or another.

Geopolitical instability rules that region of critical resources currently. The impacts are global. Where things will go next is unclear.

What is clear? Well, waging war against Iran is changing global financial and political arrangements. On a related note, the asymmetric conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis, or Ansarallah, is spreading and weakening the projection of U.S. military power in the Arabian Peninsula.

Stateside, foreign policy connects with the power imbalance between voters and non voters on one side, and the moneyed few (corporations and billionaires) profiting from a computerized, financialized and militarized rule, an order undergoing change now. The contradictions, economically and politically, are rising. Voting Blue or Red is a partial option.

The context is a superpower in decline, with the poor and working classes in a state of disorganized disarray. That can also change.

There’s money for war but not for the poor. Financial and political instability is in the air, supplying oxygen to movement politics, an option to business as usual.