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. Beyond
exposing the profit-making desires, political interests, racism, and
toxic masculinity underlying the country’s relationship to war and
empire, The United States of War shows how the long history of
U.S. military expansion shapes our daily lives, from today’s
multi-trillion–dollar wars to the pervasiveness of violence and
militarism in everyday U.S. 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.