The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State

A few words from David

“I remember vividly how one of the members of my cohort (from a very different field than my own) helped me understand how the Military Industrial Complex’s corrupting influence affected the creation of a new U.S. military hospital in Germany, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process. A filmmaker/scholar, a dancer, and two visual artists in my cohort profoundly influenced my sense of the importance of using film/video, pop culture, and other creative works to advance public policy goals.”

A Quote from The United States of War

“Without a reckoning with our history of war and its effects, we will likely continue to lurch from one war to the next, with war begetting more war. I hope this book helps contribute to such a reckoning. I hope this book provides some encouragement and ideas to those who would act on the basis of our knowledge of the past—to end wars funded with U.S. taxpayers’ money and to help repair and heal some of the damage that U.S. wars have inflicted on victims from all nations, including victims in the United States…. Equal enjoyment of democratic rights globally. Justice for all. Global equity. Reckoning with past wars and violence. The pursuit of healing. Surely these are better foundations for the foreign policy of the United States and for engaging with other human beings in the world than a foreign policy and an entire society revolving around a state of permanent war?”

Synopsis

The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This non-stop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the U.S. has been at war or invaded other countries in almost every year since independence. With The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody, near-permanent conflict from Columbus’s 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire. Drawing on historical and first-hand ethnographic research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates how US leaders across generations have locked the United States in a self-perpetuating system of permanent war by constructing the world’s largest ever collection of foreign military bases—a global matrix that has made offensive interventionist wars more likely.

Beyond exposing the profit-making desires, political interests, and ideological forces underlying the country’s relationship to war and empire, The United States of War shows how this history of aggressive military expansion shapes our daily lives, from today’s multi-trillion dollar wars to the pervasiveness of violence and militarism in everyday US life. The book concludes by confronting the catastrophic toll of American wars—which have left millions dead, wounded, and displaced—while offering proposals for how we can end the fighting.