The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II
The Violent American Century addresses the U.S.-led transformations in war conduct and strategizing that followed 1945—beginning with brutal localized hostilities, proxy wars, and the nuclear terror of the Cold War, and ending with the asymmetrical conflicts of the present day [...]
World War II marked the apogee of industrialized “total war.” Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe. Mobilization extended to virtually every sector of every nation. Air war, including the terror bombing of civilians, emerged as a central strategy of the victorious Anglo-American powers. The devastation was catastrophic almost everywhere, with the notable exception of the United States, which exited the strife unscathed and unmatched in power and influence. The death toll of fighting forces plus civilians worldwide was staggering.
The Violent American Century addresses the U.S.-led transformations in war conduct and strategizing that followed 1945—beginning with brutal localized hostilities, proxy wars, and the nuclear terror of the Cold War, and ending with the asymmetrical conflicts of the present day. The military playbook now meshes brute force with a focus on non-state terrorism, counterinsurgency, clandestine operations, a vast web of overseas American military bases, and—most touted of all—a revolutionary new era of computerized “precision” warfare. In contrast to World War II, postwar death and destruction has been comparatively small. By any other measure, it has been appalling—and shows no sign of abating.
The winner of numerous national prizes for his historical writings, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Dower draws heavily on hard data and internal U.S. planning and pronouncements in this concise analysis of war and terror in our time. In doing so, he places U.S. policy and practice firmly within the broader context of global mayhem, havoc, and slaughter since World War II—always with bottom-line attentiveness to the human costs of this legacy of unceasing violence.
By John Dower
Reviews/Praise
“[TheViolent American Century] is so important, such essential reading… There is much in it that I knew, and quite a bit that I vaguely remembered, and some that I had never assimilated, but to have all that information in one short text, expertly woven and explained, is a devastating indictment of American violence and its imperial hubris. The footnotes alone are more than worth the price (which is very low, especially if we compare it to a Tomahawk missile). It is really like a mini-encyclopedia of American expansionism, but written with the verve of a political thriller, and with the murderer being chased and nailed down step by misstep….The Violent American Century has a chance to affect at a massive level our understanding of the world we live in, the one that America has shaped but has been unable to dominate. At a time when the military has taken over the national government — not to mention the industrialists — I am grateful to have Dower’s fierce intelligence on our side. Let’s hope it gets the readership it deserves”—Ariel Dorfman, New York Times
“John Dower ends this grim recounting of 75 years of constant war, intervention, assassination and other crimes by calling for “serious consideration” of why the most powerful nation in world history is so dedicated to these practices while ignoring the nature of its actions and their consequences – an injunction that could hardly be more timely or necessary as the Pentagon’s “arc of instability” expands to an “ocean of instability” and even an ‘atomic arc of instability’ in Dower’s perceptive reflections on today’s frightening world.”
—Noam Chomsky
“Dower delivers a convincing blow to publisher Henry Luce’s benign “American Century’ thesis, positing that violence has continued at an epic pace through conventional combat and terrorism as well as through famine, disease, and displacement of people from their homelands. The U.S. often responds as victim rather than villain, but Dower concludes that the country’s preoccupation with its own exceptionalism continues to perpetuate the American hubris that fuels ever more violent international conflicts.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“No historian understands the human cost of war, with its paranoia, madness and violence, as does John Dower, and in this deeply researched volume he tells how America, since the end of World War II, has turned away from its ideals and goodness to become a match setting the world on fire. George W. Bush’s post-9/11 ‘global war on terror’ was not a new adventure, but just more of the same.”
—Seymour Hersh
In The Violent American Century, John Dower has produced a sharply eloquent account of the use of U.S. military power since World War II. From “hot” Cold War conflicts to drone strikes, Dower examines the machinery of American violence and its staggering toll. This is an indispensable book.
—Marilyn Young, author of Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990
“John Dower is our most judicious guide to the dark underbelly of post-War American power in the world. Those who focus on Europe and North America speak of a Pax Americana. This is to ignore the technologies of violence that Washington meticulously deployed in Asia and the global South, from total war to “shock and awe,” of which Dower is our unflinching analyst.”
— Juan Cole, author of The New Arabs
A lucid, convincing, and chilling account of the self-deceiving American fall into violence. Dower’s clear-eyed analysis of a terrible history, for its faith in the power of truth, invites a fresh determination to demand another way. Just in time.
—James Carroll, author of An American Requiem
A timely, compact, and utterly compelling exposé of the myriad contradictions besetting U.S. national security policy. John Dower has written a powerful book.
—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
“If you think that because we’ve never experienced World War III the world is becoming far more peaceful, John Dower’s book is mandatory reading. In clear, carefully documented fashion, this superb historian shows just how much violence the United States has unleashed outside its borders since 1945, so much of it below the radar of our awareness at the time—and of our memories today.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Real Semites are the Palestinians. Current Zionists Israelis genetically are not the Semites.They are the real anti Semitic people. Please world stop those anti Semitic warmongers Israeli Zionists!Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSaveSaveSave
The German occupation forces were those who have been the first to create and recognize a short-lived state’s independence of Ukraine in January 1918 during the time of their-own inspired and supported anti-Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917−1921. As reoccupied by the Bolshevik Red Army, the eastern and southern parts of the present-day territory of (a Greater) Ukraine joined in 1922 the USSR as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (without Crimea). According to the 1926 Soviet census of Crimea, the majority of its population were the Russians (382.645). The second-largest ethnic group were the Tartars (179.094). Therefore, a Jew V. I. ...
The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge (KR) forces stormed Phnom Penh and reestablished Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea — a supposedly self-sufficient, entirely agrarian society. Resetting the clock to “Year Zero,” the KR forced urban dwellers to the countryside, and began to “purify” Cambodia through a genocidal purge of intellectuals and minority groups. By the time the slaughter came to an end in 1979 — after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the KR from power — some 1.7 million people (21 percent ...
Paris vs. DonbassOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
The US has been threatening Iran for more than 20 years. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran. This posting which includes selected articles from our archives was originally published by Global Research 12 years ago in May 2005. In the wake of the war on Iraq (2003), the Bush administration officially identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. Bush’s National Security doctrine contained in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a continuation of Clinton’s “strategy of ...
Human Rights Day, December 10, 2016, we bring to the attention of our readers an important article published in 2002 on the record of US war crimes.The issue of War Crimes emerged after World War I at the Versailles Conference, but it was not until the end of World War II that a more comprehensive definition of what constitutes war crimes was developed. First among new international conventions addressing war crimes was the 1950 Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Its fundamental premise was that the conduct of war in violation of international treaties was a crime against peace. Ill treatment ...
QASEM SULEJMANI FOUGHT IN BIH AGAINST SERBS?! A Croatian journalist discovers who was killed by the Iranian general! It was important for James Bond the Middle East, turning the WAR on in SYRIA!Hasan Haidar Diab (56) is a prominent Croatian journalist and war reporter. However, his link to the Balkans is in the Eighties of the last century, when from native Beirut to study in the then SFR Yugoslavia, and that is due thanks to the character and part of Josip Broz Tito, or his role in the Non-Aligned MovementOver the years of the war, primarily because of the knowledge ...
We all know how the story goes. The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. It was then controversially annexed in 1981, despite the UN calling the efforts “null”, “void” and “without international legal effect”. Today it is still internationally and legally recognised as Syrian land, but Israel persists with its possession.Of course, such persistence can prove to be quite lucrative when the land is abundant in resources – especially land as fertile as the Syrian Golan – a generous source of gushing waters and game changing oil reserves.In fact, the ...
On December 22 last year the government of Syria regained control of the city of Aleppo that had been occupied by brutal rebel forces since 2012. As reported by the BBC, «The predominantly Sunni Muslim opposition is made of several rebel groups, many of whom have received financial aid from key opponents of President Assad, including the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey».Following defeat of the US-supported insurgents, «Under a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia, convoys of buses and cars have shuttled thousands of civilians and fighters out of Aleppo's last rebel-held pocket toward opposition areas outside the city», and peace was restored, much to the ...
Perhaps no country on Earth is more misunderstood by Americans than North Korea. Though the country's leaders are typically portrayed as buffoonish, even silly, in fact they are deadly serious in their cruelty and skill at retaining power. Though the country is seen as Soviet-style communist, in fact it is better understood as a holdover of Japanese fascism.And there is another misconception, one that Americans might not want to hear but that is important for understanding the hermit kingdom: Yes, much of its anti-Americanism is cynically manufactured as a propaganda tool, and yes, it is often based on lies. But ...
Like in Israel, US ruling elites plan for the future strategies and choose presidents to suit the needs. After using a Black President Obama to attack North Africans and Arab nations for their energy resources in order to ensure energy security of the superpower, now the US leaders seem to think of using a female President in the name of Hillary to advance US interests globally.Former US state secretary Hillary Clinton and associates are being pampered by those who are scared of any possible change in US foreign policy towards a possible thaw and neutrality in world affairs, notwithstanding what ...
UN Third Committee Resolution L.23 IN, Legitimizes Stranglehold Economic Sanctions., Used as a Means to "Obliterate" North KoreaOn November 15, 2016 the United Nations Third Committee adopted the resolution: “Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea".Among the co-sponsors of the Resolution were United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, etc.Disassociating themselves from the resolution, which they denounced as invalid, were China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, and three other countries opposed to the biased character and double standards that typify “country-specific” resolutions. The so-sponsors of this resolution are themselves guilty of criminal human rights violations.The very ...
As President Trump affirms publicly his commitment to friendly relations with Russia at an economic summit in Hanoi, (the first President since Franklin Roosevelt to do so), the press backs the special prosecutor seeking to indict him, while NATO continues to ramp up its forces on Russia’s borders with Europe by bringing in tanks and other ‘defensive’ weapons. Although the United States was founded on Christian principles, and has one of the highest percentages of people practicing a religion of any Western country, most Americans seem not to realize that their country is building a case for nuclear war with the ...
During the last thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the world, renamed by the West into a “Euro-Atlantic” one, began to change drastically, giving itself a completely different substance than Washington and the “renewed Europe” organized by America wanted it to be. It began to swell with a completely different meaning, the balance of forces in it began to change, and the East, together with Russia and China, announced that a new future was coming. Even India, Iran, Brazil, and South Africa have grown economically and militarily and politically aware of their place in modern history, demonstrating to ...
US duopoly power replaced the eras of Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. No JFKs exist, President Kennedy as we recall was a peacemaker assassinated for opposing war, urging nuclear disarmament and the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union. New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society programs are heading for history’s dust bin. Bipartisan neocons infesting Washington want social justice ended, neoliberal enslavement replacing it, fascist police state harshness enforcing it.America is a gangster state, criminals running it – beginning in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, hardened under George W. Bush, institutionalized under Obama, certain to worsen no matter who succeeds him.US ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
After the first decade after the Cold War, it became obvious that an idea of global governance is going to be impossible primarily due to an aggressive US foreign policy as Washington intended to become the world hegemon and global policeman. A turning point in the post-Cold War IR became the Kosovo War of 1998−1999, which resulted in the NATO’s occupation of the south-western region of Serbia based on an idea of „Just War“,[1] but in practice for the creation of the mafia state of the Kosovar Muslim Albanians.[2] As a direct consequence of the NATO’s aggression on Serbia and ...
Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral “peace keeper”, pursuing a so-called policy of “multilateralism” and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian independence from the United ...
Today the Old (dying out) Continent is under multi-faced crises pressure some of them having older roots but the others are the product of current political decisions and moves by the European decision-makers (and those who are behind them across the Ocean).The European oldest and mostly painful crisis-problem is a biological declination of the whole continent what from the economic point of view means, at least for the western countries, an import of a huge number of the „outsiders“ in order just to keep the same level of the economic production and national GDP. This solution of course produces a ...
With the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the authorities in Kyiv began to actively raise funds for the country’s defense. Foreign states responded to the call, as well as individuals and companies. Almost every European who sympathized with Ukraine started sending donations, and cryptocurrencies have become one of the most convenient means of doing this. The anonymity and ease of transactions of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets have made cryptocurrencies an ideal means for citizens of various countries willing to assist Ukraine. Four months later, Ukraine had already received more than $100 million sent in from all over the ...
“John Dower ends this grim recounting of 75 years of constant war, intervention, assassination and other crimes by calling for “serious consideration” of why the most powerful nation in world history is so dedicated to these practices while ignoring the nature of its actions and their consequences – an injunction that could hardly be more timely or necessary as the Pentagon’s “arc of instability” expands to an “ocean of instability” and even an ‘atomic arc of instability’ in Dower’s perceptive reflections on today’s frightening world.”
