United States of War

The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the United States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus's 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire. Drawing on historical and firsthand anthropological 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.

“The United States does not do nation building,” claimed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld three years ago. Yet what are we to make of the American military bases in Korea? Why do American warships patrol the Somali coastline? And perhaps most significantly, why are fourteen “enduring bases” being built in Iraq?…

The United States was forged as a nation in a war, and through its long history, it has repeatedly had to go back to war to protect its independence and the freedoms on which it was founded. Although war runs counter to the democratic principles of the United States, it is an unavoidable central theme of American history. The United States at War addresses this theme by offering compact surveys of the most important military conflicts in which the United States has been involved–from the Revolutionary War through the Iraq War of 2003. The two-volume set's 177 essays examine these conflicts from a variety of perspectives, ranging from detailed discussions of individual battles to overviews of the broader ramifications of the conflicts.