Making Endless War
Coming soon(-ish) to a bookstore near you
The US military conducted “counterterrorism operations” in 78 countries between 2021 and 2023, including ground combat in at least nine and air strikes in another four, according to the latest data from the Costs of War Project. And that was before Trump’s second term, which has seen, among other things, attacks on Ecuador and Nigeria, the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, an invasion of Venezuela, and, of course, the war on Iran.
In other words, more than two decades after the start of the ‘Global War on Terror,’ the United States is still engaged in seemingly never-ending war around the world.
Yet despite all this warring, few Americans are directly connected to the war economy, and even fewer have seen combat. Apart from when a conflict affects gas prices, most American generally go about their daily lives without thinking about the death and destruction their government is wreaking. (Over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Another ~3.7 million people died of other war-related causes.)
The fact that US wars tend to fly under the radar of most Americans is especially notable because it is a far cry from previous eras: in the twentieth century, millions of young men were drafted to fight and die in battlefields across Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Millions more—men and women alike—entered the industrial workforce to produce supplies for the front. Governments raised war taxes and implemented ration systems. For much of US history, war meant dramatic changes to daily life. Today, it barely registers.
Clearly something has shifted. But, at the same time, it's not as if what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” (the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” whose “total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government”) has gotten smaller.
In fact, decades of war has wrought record-breaking military spending, with much of it flowing to private contractors. More and more firms, banks, and investment accounts have become entangled with massive companies that make great profits off the military, from traditional arms producers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to tech, construction, and logistics giants like Palantir, KBR, and SpaceX.
War is good business, as they say.
In short, there’s been a change in how Americans relate to the wars their government wages in their name: for most, they’re more hidden from view, while for a few, they’re a growing part of the bottom line.
What gives? And so what?
Those are the very academic questions at the center of my book, Making Endless War: Global Capitalism, Military-Industrial Transformation, and the End of the American Century, which I’m excited to share will be published next year by Stanford University Press.
Here’s the pitch:
Over the past quarter-century, the US has used its globe-spanning military presence to conduct operations, launch invasions, and drop bombs in dozens of countries around the world. Yet, as war wages, everyday life for most Americans continues largely without interruptions. There has been no draft, no war tax, no rationing, and no mobilization. How can the US wage endless war with little participation from its people or disruption to their everyday lives? Reeling from the crisis catalyzed by defeat in Vietnam, military-industrial elites abolished the draft, reorganized armaments production, and embraced just-in-time supply chains. These changes eroded the power and reduced the number of working people involved in war-making. At the same time, this restructuring yielded a deep articulation of war- and profit-making as it interacted with neoliberal globalization and financialization. The result was an organization of war-making that places few social and political constraints on war. Tracing the historical trajectory of and global contestation over these transformations, this book demonstrates how the same social structures that enable expansive war have also yielded labor unrest, supply chain woes, depleted weapons stockpiles, a hollowed-out industrial-base, and crumbling international alliances. This situation has brought the US and its war-making apparatus to the brink of crisis—and may open opportunities for those who wish to bring an end to endless war.
Unfortunately, this book is quite timely. “Supply chains woes, depleted stockpiles, and crumbling alliances” could be a tagline for Trump’s war on Iran. Perhaps no foreign policy disaster since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has sparked as much talk of a crisis of US world power.
After just a few weeks of war, the threat of a munitions shortage sparked a panic, arms manufacturers were chastised for their hollowed out capacity, US soldiers expressed concerns about a lack of preparation and poor messaging from top commanders, allies in Europe and the Gulf felt abandoned and unprotected, and the stock prices of armaments firms, oil companies, and the tech industry soared—as most Americans braced for the economic impact of higher gas prices, mortgage rates, and inflation.
To be clear, the book is not a commentary on “current affairs”—it’s a work of historical sociology. Nevertheless, each of these recent developments are foreshadowed in it.
First and foremost, the book traces the global social transformation of US war-making over the past three-quarters of a century—from Fort Worth to Baghdad, from Portland to Cam Ranh Bay, and from Washington to Wall Street. It examines why, how, and to whose benefit the US military-industrial complex has changed over time.
But the book will also help readers make a little more sense of the present moment by illuminating the contours of US war-making today, and by contextualizing them within the broader transformations of global capitalism.
Over the coming months, among other things, I hope to share a little bit more about the book, especially as it relates to the deepening chaos around us. For now, thanks for reading, and stay on the lookout for a pre-order link!