Spoils of War - Power, Profit and the American War Machine

Fully updated from the original edition. As the retreat from Kabul shows, America goes to war not to bring democracy, or glory, but in the pursuit of profit. In The Spoils of War, leading Washington reporter, Andrew Cockburn, reveals the extent of the rot that stretches from the Pentagon and the White House, to Wall St and Silicon Valley.

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.

About the author

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's Magazine. 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. He is the author of Spoils of War, Kill Chain, and Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.

Summary

Why Does America Go to War?

Report

Cockburn is ... an assiduous investigator and skillful narrator. Foreign Affairs

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Cockburn
• Publisher: Verso
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.11.2022
• EAN: 9781839763687
• ISBN: 978-1-83976-368-7
• No. of pages: 304
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Journalism; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Journalism, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Geopolitics, Geopolitics, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General, Reportage & collected journalism, Comparative Politics, Reportage, journalism or collected columns