Skip to main content
University of California Press

The United States of War

A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State
by David Vine (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $13.95 / £11.99
Publication Date: Oct 2020
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9780520972070
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 28 maps, 2 photographs
Series:
Endowments:
Read an Excerpt(opens in new window)
Recommend to your Library (PDF)(opens in new window)Rights and Permissions

About the Book

2020 L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist, History

A provocative examination of how the U.S. military has shaped our entire world, from today’s costly, endless wars to the prominence of violence in everyday American life.

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 U.S. empire. Drawing on historical and firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates how U.S. 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.

About the Author

David Vine is Professor of Anthropology at American University. His other books include Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World and Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
A Note on Language and Terminology

Introduction: “If We Build Them, Wars Will Come” 

Part I Imperial Succession
1. Conquest
2. Occupied

Part II Expanding Empire
3. Why Are So Many Places Named Fort?
4. Invading Your Neighbors
5. The Permanent Indian Frontier
6. Going Global

Part III imperial transitions
7. The Military Opens Doors
8. Reopening the Frontier

Part IV Global Empire
9. Empire of Bases 
10. The Spoils of War
11. Normalizing Occupation
12. Islands of Imperialism
13. The Colonial Present
14. Building Blowback

Part V Hyperimperialism
15. Did the “Cold War” End?
16. Out-of-Control War
17. War Is the Mission

Conclusion: Ending “Endless Wars”

Gratitude and Thanks
Appendix: U.S. Wars, Combat, and Other Combat Actions Abroad
Notes
Suggested Resources
Index

Reviews

"A wide-ranging survey of the American way of war, expensive and incessant, in support of an empire we’re not supposed to have. . . . Vine offers much to ponder about our militarized foreign policy and its deep antecedents."
— Kirkus Reviews
"Military expansion, war without end, and the pervasiveness of violence in American lives: Vine offers countless insights into this uniquely American way of war."
 
— Foreword Reviews
"While the idea that the global expansion of military bases corresponds with the rise of US empire may seem obvious, this book convincingly shows that it is both consequence and cause. Vine brilliantly documents the way widespread global military positions—which are always sold to the public as defensive—are, by their very nature, offensive and become their own self-fulfilling ecosystems of conquest. . . . One walks away convinced that the US empire and its global network of bases must be dismantled if we are to have any hope of putting a stop to the devastating cycle of endless US wars and meddling."
— Jacobin
“I hope every person on earth reads The United States of War.”
— War is a Crime
"Provides a comprehensive history of Washington’s quest for empire. . . . The United States of War is a unique history text. Convincing in its portrayal of US military bases as both the outposts of empire and the remote supplier to the troops whose mission is to maintain and expand that empire, the timeline the author constructs is one that argues the US has always been an imperial nation—and not by some accident or circumstance of history."

 
— CounterPunch
"A sweeping indictment of the nation’s heavily militarized foreign policy, including the nearly incalculable costs, financial as well as moral, that have been exacted both at home and abroad. . . . The definitive account of the history of U.S. overseas bases and their role in the history of American militarism."
 
— Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
“Revelatory. . . . By identifying the link between bases and war, Vine has found a simple and possibly powerful lever with which to move . . . large structural forces. You want peace? Close the bases. Fewer overseas outposts would mean fewer provocations for foreign anger, fewer targets for attacks, and fewer inducements for Washington to solve its problems by using force.”
— The Nation
"Wonderful and disturbing. . . . Encyclopedic in its coverage. . . . I highly recommend the book. It roused even me, a lifetime pacifist and antiwar activist, to increased awareness of the profound extent and impact of US bases and wars on both the United States and the rest of the world. The book is an extremely useful (and therefore very depressing) compendium of what can rightfully be called the US war machine and empire."
 
— Anthropology and Humanism

"David Vine’s book, enriched by a series of maps, is not just a history book based on a mere chronological sequence of events. It also gives voice to some of the people who were affected by US expansionist policy. The interviews collected during many years of research make this book an important resource not only for all scholars interested in geopolitics and US history, but also for all people who want to understand the reason for so many conflicts around the world and the evolution of American imperialism."

— Houston Review of Books

"Make[s] it quite clear that war on other peoples and nations is the defining element of the United States, its past, its present and probably its future. It’s a very tall order, but Vine makes it clear that preventing US wars overseas begins by closing US bases overseas."

— Counter Punch
"In explaining the nation's permawar reality, Vine makes a profoundly important contribution to educators as well as to activists and advocates who challenge the nation's engrained militarism."
— Peace & Change
?"One of the most illuminating studies of how the US' empire of forts and bases developed and works.?"
— The Wire
"The United States of War is for anyone who wants to find a single source for an encompassing yet relatively concise overview of the ceaseless intervention and aggression by the United States, from its racist, colonial roots, to its extractive, deadly activities from bases around the world today."
— Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
"The United States of War is a clarion call for fundamental transformation of U.S. society and culture away from militarism."
— New Mexico Historical Review

"David Vine's book is a brilliant tour de force, a sweeping introspection, dissection, and condemnation of U.S. war-making and the myriad ways that U.S. military bases splayed around the world grease the wheels of the war machine. Exposing the intimate connections between these bases and war, he exhorts us to disentangle the web so that the United States of Peace can emerge. Read it and act."—Medea Benjamin, Codirector, CODEPINK

"David Vine's previous book, Base Nation, provided a clear look at rampant U.S. imperialism as exhibited by U.S. overseas basing at some 750 locations across the globe. In a similar vein, The United States of War is an agonizing read even if the myth of U.S. exceptionalism is already badly tattered. In short, 'exceptionalism' only applies if one means unique brutality, violence, ruthlessness, unparalleled pursuit of self-interest, and imperialism of the most blatant and degrading sort—an exceptionalism that has meant the deaths of millions, the maiming of millions more, and the wandering from state to state of even more millions displaced by war. It is not a book to read curled up by a warm winter fire; rather, it's a book to stir your soul—if you have one left—to action."—Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, USA (Ret), former chief of staff, U.S. Department of State, and Professor of Government and Public Policy, the College of William and Mary 

"David Vine's The United States of War puts a much needed pin to the balloon of American exceptionalism. An invaluable guide to a country that, long before Orwell came along, said war was peace–and interventionism was the highest form of anti-colonialism. The United States of War is especially important now, as we try to make sense of a presidential administration that, in the name of so-called isolationism, has left a trail of global destruction in its wake."—Greg Grandin, Professor of History, Yale University, and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

"Vine's newest book connects Fort Lauderdale to Okinawa. It makes me realize I can't make adequate sense of U.S. militarism today if I don't take seriously Native Americans' history. The book will make us all globally smarter and a lot more curious."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

"Along with this book being a model of excellent scholarship, Vine is a gifted writer. Reading the text is akin to reading the very best of essay writing and will make the text accessible to academic and non-academic readers, as well as to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

"A brisk, sweeping, and utterly persuasive account of the relationship between foreign bases and the U.S. propensity for war. The case that Vine makes is irrefutable: the former spawn the latter."—Andrew Bacevich, author of The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

Awards

  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History category) Finalist 2020 2021, Los Angeles Times

Media

Get a "sneak peek" of United States of War.