Download or read book The United States of War written by David Vine and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Scholastic Encyclopedia of the United States at War written by June English and published by Scholastic Reference. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses all of the major wars in which the United States has participated beginning with the American Revolution and concluding with the War in Iraq in 2003.

Download or read book United States in War with Spain and the History of Cuba written by Trumbull White and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated written by George Wilkins Kendall and published by . This book was released on 1851 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Kenneth J. Hagan and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2007-04-25 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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? In every major foreign war fought by United States in the last century, the repercussions of the American presence have been felt long after the last Marine has left. Kenneth J. Hagan and Ian J. Bickerton argue here that, despite adamant protests from the military and government alike, nation building and occupation are indeed hallmarks—and unintended consequences—of American warmaking. In this timely, groundbreaking study, the authors examine ten major wars fought by the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the ongoing Iraq War, and analyze the conflicts’ unintended consequences. These unexpected outcomes, Unintended Consequences persuasively demonstrates, stemmed from ill-informed decisions made at critical junctures and the surprisingly similar crises that emerged at the end of formal fighting. As a result, war did not end with treaties or withdrawn troops. Instead, time after time, the United States became inextricably involved in the issues of the defeated country, committing itself to the chaotic aftermath that often completely subverted the intended purposes of war. Stunningly, Unintended Consequences contends that the vast majority of wars launched by the United States were unnecessary, avoidable, and catastrophically unpredictable. In a stark challenge to accepted scholarship, the authors show that the wars’ unintended consequences far outweighed the initial calculated goals, and thus forced cataclysmic shifts in American domestic and foreign policy. A must-read for anyone concerned with the past, present, or future of American defense, Unintended Consequences offers a provocative perspective on the current predicament in Iraq and the conflicts sure to loom ahead of us.

Download or read book Humane written by Samuel Moyn and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] brilliant new book . . . Humane provides a powerful intellectual history of the American way of war. It is a bold departure from decades of historiography dominated by interventionist bromides." —Jackson Lears, The New York Review of Books A prominent historian exposes the dark side of making war more humane In the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who’s president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere. In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical—to ban torture and limit civilian casualties—have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability. Leo Tolstoy prominently opposed their efforts, reasoning that war needed to be abolished, not reformed—and over the subsequent century, a popular movement to abolish war flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, however, reformers shifted their attention from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences. The ramifications of this shift became apparent in the post-9/11 era. By that time, the US military had embraced the agenda of humane war, driven both by the availability of precision weaponry and the need to protect its image. The battle shifted from the streets to the courtroom, where the tactics of the war on terror were litigated but its foundational assumptions went without serious challenge. These trends only accelerated during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Even as the two administrations spoke of American power and morality in radically different tones, they ushered in the second decade of the “forever” war. Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless. This provocative book argues that this development might not represent progress at all.

Download or read book Roots of War written by Richard J. Barnet and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book War How Conflict Shaped Us written by Margaret MacMillan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book.”—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.

Download or read book America at War written by Terence T. Finn and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War—organized violence against an enemy of the state—seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington’s call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years. In so doing, the objectives have been simple: advance the cause of freedom, protect U.S. interests, and impose America’s will upon a troubled world. More often than not, the results have been successful as America’s military has accounted itself well. Yet the cost has been high, in both blood and treasure. Americans have fought and died around the globe—on land, at sea, and in the air. Without doubt, their actions have shaped the world in which we live. In this comprehensive collection, Terence T. Finn provides a set of narratives—each concise and readable—on the twelve major wars America has fought. He explains what happened, and why such places as Saratoga and Antietam, Manila Bay and Midway are important to an understanding of America’s past. Readers will easily be able to brush up on their history and acquaint themselves with those individuals and events that have helped define the United States of America.

Download or read book Music and War in the United States written by Sarah Kraaz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and War in the United States introduces students to the long and varied history of music's role in war. Spanning the history of wars involving the United States from the American Revolution to the Iraq war, with contributions from both senior and emerging scholars, this edited volume brings together key themes in this vital area of study. The intersection of music and war has been of growing interest to scholars in recent decades, but to date, no book has brought together this scholarship in a way that is accessible to students. Filling this gap, the chapters here address topics such as military music, commemoration, music as propaganda and protest, and the role of music in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), enabling readers to come to grips with the rich and complex relationship between one of the most essential arts and the conflicts that have shaped American society.

Download or read book Showdown written by Jed Babbin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will the U.S. go to war with China over Taiwan or oil? Yes-bestselling authors Ed Timperlake and Jed Babbin say Chinese aggression is virtually inevitable and in their new book, "Showdown", they address the threat of mainland China and Bush's promise to defend Taiwan - at any cost. "Showdown" offers indispensable strategies and tactics for the U.S. to respond to the Chinese military threat in this ongoing battle for democracy and freedom.

Download or read book In the Wake of War written by Andrew F. Lang and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War era marked the dawn of American wars of military occupation, inaugurating a tradition that persisted through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that continues to the present. In the Wake of War traces how volunteer and even professional soldiers found themselves tasked with the unprecedented project of wartime and peacetime military occupation, initiating a national debate about the changing nature of American military practice that continued into Reconstruction. In the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, citizen-soldiers confronted the complicated challenges of invading, occupying, and subduing hostile peoples and nations. Drawing on firsthand accounts from soldiers in United States occupation forces, Andrew F. Lang shows that many white volunteers equated their martial responsibilities with those of standing armies, which were viewed as corrupting institutions hostile to the republican military ethos. With the advent of emancipation came the enlistment of African American troops into Union armies, facilitating an extraordinary change in how provisional soldiers interpreted military occupation. Black soldiers, many of whom had been formerly enslaved, garrisoned regions defeated by Union armies and embraced occupation as a tool for destabilizing the South’s long-standing racial hierarchy. Ultimately, Lang argues, traditional fears about the army’s role in peacetime society, grounded in suspicions of standing military forces and heated by a growing ambivalence about racial equality, governed the trials of Reconstruction. Focusing on how U.S. soldiers—white and black, volunteer and regular—enacted and critiqued their unprecedented duties behind the lines during the Civil War era, In the Wake of War reveals the dynamic, often problematic conditions of military occupation.

Download or read book The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War 1945 1990 written by Detlef Junker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-17 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book Tom Clancy s Net Force State of War written by Tom Clancy and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2003-03-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling creators of Op-Center comes a different kind of law enforcement. In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers. Those who control them control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI: Net Force®. Minor viruses are eating away at the Net Force computers. The e-mail shut-downs and flickering monitors are hardly emergencies—but they’ve been keeping the tech department hopping. Same with the sudden rash of time-consuming lawsuits. No one in Net Force has a moment to spare, which is exactly the way Mitchell Townsend Ames wants it. Because when the shadowy mastermind launches his master plan, he wants Net Force to be looking the other way…

Download or read book The American Way of War written by Russell Frank Weigley and published by New York : Macmillan. This book was released on 1973 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this authoritative and controversial study, Russel F. Weigley traces the emergence of a characteristic American way of war - in which the object of military strategy has come to mean total destruction of the enemy, first of his armed forces, often of the whole fabric of his society.

Download or read book The Improbable War written by Christopher Coker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to challenge the current order. The 'Thucydidean Trap' - when a conservative status quo power confronts a rising new one - may also play its part in precipitating hostilities. To avoid stumbling into an avoidable war both Beijing and Washington need a coherent strategy, which neither of them has. History also reveals that war evolves continually. The next global conflict is likely to be played out in cyberspace and outer space and like all previous wars it will have devastating consequences. Such a war between the United States and China may seem improbable, but it is all too possible, which is why we need to discuss it now.

Download or read book Destined For War written by Graham Allison and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented. China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON “Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden “[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review