cover image Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War

Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War

Carl Boggs. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., $30.95 (280pp) ISBN 978-0-7425-2772-0

Boggs (Masters of War) argues that a militaristic ideology has been embedded in American history since the earliest crimes against the Native Americans, and tracks it historically through one war after another. Exploited by implicitly sinister elites since 9/11, this American strain, he argues, is now distorting our foreign policy and making ""endless war"" inevitable. Chapters argue that the U.S. military is grossly out of proportion to the country's size and economic shape; that the military has played a role in subverting democratic politics; and that the U.S. has long been in a struggle for global dominance. Two more chapters detail what Boggs sees as the U.S.'s ""Culture of Militarism"" and the ""Crimes of Empire"" it has perpetrated; the last wonders about ""The Eclipse of U.S. Hegemony?"" The author is a clear communicator of his polemical position, and his erudite apparatus provides a valuable resource for studying the history of anti-military scholarship in the U.S.