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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 unmatched in power and influence. The death toll of fighting forces plus civilians worldwide was staggering.
The Violent American Century addresses the US-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 author, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, draws heavily on hard data and internal US planning and pronouncements in this concise analysis of war and terror in our time. In doing so, he places US 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.
“Dower delivers a convincing blow to publisher Henry Luce’s benign ‘American Century’ thesis.” —Publishers Weekly
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 18, 2017 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781608467266
- File size: 787 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781608467266
- File size: 963 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 27, 2017
Dower, professor emeritus of history at MIT and winner of a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for 1999’s Embracing Defeat, counters the notion that a postwar Pax Americana, in which the U.S. assumed the role of the world’s police force, has led to decline of violence during this period. He asserts that though there are myriad conflicts and terrorist acts that do not involve the U.S., the U.S. and its allies remain key players and, indeed, perpetrators of many of the paroxysms of violence that have engulfed the globe. Moreover, the American conflicts in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia come complete with mayhem of a different order that is as deadly as the world wars. 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 Bower concludes that the country’s preoccupation with its own exceptionalism continues to perpetuate the American hubris that fuels ever more violent international conflicts.
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