The Spoils of War

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 Street 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.