Why does America go to war?
In the last decades,
America has gone to war as supposed defenders of democracy. The War
on Terror was waged to protect the west from the dangers of
Islamists. US soldiers are stationed in more than 800 locations
across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law.
In The Spoils of War Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the
intentions behind Washington’s martial appetites.
The American war
machine can only be understood in terms of the “private passions”
and “interests” of those who control it—principally a
passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports,
Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer’s urgent
financial requirements; the US Navy’s Pacific fleet deployments
were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed
high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine
commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 “because
it will do us good at budget time.”
Based on years of
wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the
largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time
terrifyingly dangerous.
