"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.”—Daniel Immerwahr, 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
"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
