Michael Sauers

August 29, 2025

According to David Vine, Professor of Anthropology at American University, “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.” 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. He draws on historical and firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories. Vine 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. It is a global matrix that has made offensive interventionist wars more likely. In the United States of War, he confronts the deadly toll of these conflicts and demonstrates how this long history of U.S. military expansion shapes our daily lives. He does offer proposals for ending the fighting. I recommend this book.