The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine

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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 Solders are stationed in over 800 locations across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law. In What America Really Wants 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 U.S. 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.

Reviews

Cockburn is ... an assiduous investigator and skillful narrator. -- Foreign Affairs
Corruption is the recurring theme that runs through the US journalist Andrew Cockburn's brilliant journalism collected in The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine. -- Richard Norton-Taylor * Declassified UK *
An accessible yet forensic account of not only why runaway military spending is wrong, but how. -- Ed O'Loughlin * Irish Times *
A devastatingly convincing account of the runaway nature of a powerful grouping of interests - the defence, intelligence and financial sectors in the US. -- Mary Kaldor * openDemocracy *
This is robust, old-fashioned progressive, polemical journalism . Cockburn describes some shocking practices, and provides valuable critiques - for example, of the over-reliance on sanctions as a coercive instrument. -- Lawrence Freedman * New Statesman *
He possesses a uniquely detailed knowledge of the arcane, lucrative machinations of this world, as well as a deep historical understanding of the forces that built it. And while the specifics change, the stories he tells all have the same shocking moral. "People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy," he quotes a former Air Force colonel as saying. "They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is: 'Don't interrupt the money flow.'" -- Jon Schwarz * The Intercept *
A withering expos reveals the insatiable and squalid profit motive that drives the US military apparatus - the largest in modern history * Morning Star *
Informative and entertaining. -- Mike Phipps * Labour Hub *
Nothing I have read for years has so reoriented, even revolutionized, my thinking about the corporate/political forces that underly our constructing and "modernizing" a doomsday machine, the subject of my own life's work I am urging everyone to read this book. -- Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Cockburn presents a damning account of America's military-industrial complex, culled from his best work over a decade on the paradoxical nature of American military power...Spoils of War is a meticulously researched book that presents a critical perspective on the 'American War Machine.' -- Marc Martorell Junyent * Responsible Statecraft *

Author Bio

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harpers magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editors Choice for Rumsfeld, The Threat, and Kill Chain. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.