Permanent War

Permanent War
Author: Sidney Lens
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN:

Washington Rules

Washington Rules
Author: Andrew Bacevich
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429943262

The bestselling author of The Limits of Power critically examines the Washington consensus on national security and why it must change For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel. In Washington Rules, a vivid, incisive analysis, Andrew J. Bacevich succinctly presents the origins of this consensus, forged at a moment when American power was at its height. He exposes the preconceptions, biases, and habits that underlie our pervasive faith in military might, especially the notion that overwhelming superiority will oblige others to accommodate America's needs and desires—whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods. And he challenges the usefulness of our militarism as it has become both unaffordable and increasingly dangerous. Though our politicians deny it, American global might is faltering. This is the moment, Bacevich argues, to reconsider the principles which shape American policy in the world—to acknowledge that fixing Afghanistan should not take precedence over fixing Detroit. Replacing this Washington consensus is crucial to America's future, and may yet offer the key to the country's salvation.

On War

On War
Author: Carl von Clausewitz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1908
Genre: Military art and science
ISBN:

Empire of Defense

Empire of Defense
Author: Joseph Darda
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 022663292X

Empire of Defense tells the story of how the United States turned war into defense. When the Truman administration dissolved the Department of War in 1947 and formed the Department of Defense, it marked not the end of conventional war but, Joseph Darda argues, the introduction of new racial criteria for who could wage it––for which countries and communities could claim self-defense. From the formation of the DOD to the long wars of the twenty-first century, the United States rebranded war as the defense of Western liberalism from first communism, then crime, authoritarianism, and terrorism. Officials learned to frame state violence against Asians, Black and brown people, Arabs, and Muslims as the safeguarding of human rights from illiberal beliefs and behaviors. Through government documents, news media, and the writing and art of Joseph Heller, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, I. F. Stone, and others, Darda shows how defense remade and sustained a weakened color line with new racial categories (the communist, the criminal, the authoritarian, the terrorist) that cast the state’s ideological enemies outside the human of human rights. Amid the rise of anticolonial and antiracist movements the world over, defense secured the future of war and white dominance.

Military Waste

Military Waste
Author: Joshua O. Reno
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520974123

World War III has yet to happen, and yet material evidence of this conflict is strewn everywhere: resting at the bottom of the ocean, rusting in deserts, and floating in near-Earth orbit. In Military Waste, Joshua O. Reno offers a unique analysis of the costs of American war preparation through an examination of the lives and stories of American civilians confronted with what is left over and cast aside when a society is permanently ready for war. Using ethnographic and archival research, Reno demonstrates how obsolete military junk in its various incarnations affects people and places far from the battlegrounds that are ordinarily associated with warfare. Using a broad swath of examples—from excess planes, ships, and space debris that fall into civilian hands, to the dispossessed and polluted island territories once occupied by military bases, to the militarized masculinities of mass shooters—Military Waste reveals the unexpected and open-ended relationships that non-combatants on the home front form with a nation permanently ready for war.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Author: Gore Vidal
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2002-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1568586531

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." -- Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters." -- Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe." -- Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books

Making the Forever War

Making the Forever War
Author: Mark Philip Bradley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-06-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781625345691

The late historian Marilyn B. Young, a preeminent voice on the history of U.S. military conflict, spent her career reassessing the nature of American global power, its influence on domestic culture and politics, and the consequences felt by those on the receiving end of U.S. military force. At the center of her inquiries was a seeming paradox: How can the United States stay continually at war, yet Americans pay so little attention to this militarism? Making the Forever War brings Young's articles and essays on American war together for the first time, including never before published works. Moving from the first years of the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam, and more recent "forever" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Young reveals the ways in which war became ever-present, yet more covert and abstract, particularly as aerial bombings and faceless drone strikes have attained greater strategic value. For Young, U.S. empire persisted because of, not despite, the inattention of most Americans. The collection concludes with an afterword by prominent military historian Andrew Bacevich.

Educating for Peace in a Time of "permanent War"

Educating for Peace in a Time of
Author: Paul R. Carr
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0415899206

Little is done in schools at the formal and informal levels to address war and peace, especially in relation to what can and should be done to bring about peace. This volume seeks to provide a range of policy, pedagogical, curriculum and institutional analyses aimed at facilitating meaningful engagement toward a more robust and critical examination of the role that schools play in framing war, militarization and armed conflict.