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To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is foreordained.

NOTE ON SOURCES

All but the introduction to this book and two of the pieces in it appeared first online at the website TomDispatch.com, and there they were heavily sourced. Instead of footnotes, most had links, and, even when there were footnotes, the cites were normally largely to the URLs of various websites. A long set of URLs as footnotes in a book is, however, both awkward and largely useless. As a result, the essays in this book are unfootnoted and unsourced. However, if you go to TomDispatch.com and use either the search window or the website’s month-by-month archives, you can check the original sourcing on any of these pieces. The Internet offers the first democratic form of footnoting; unfortunately—fair warning—a certain number of those links do go dead over time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the helpful suggestions and inspiration of several good friends and colleagues. These include Kozy Amemiya, Alfredo and Maricler Antognini, Marshall Auerback, Juan Cole, Sam Coleman, Bruce Cumings, Sandy Dijkstra, Giorgio and Noretta Freddi, Pat Hatcher, Barry Keehn, Ken Kopp, Thomas Royden, Michael Rubano, Chiho Sawada, Nick Turse, and Dustin Wright. Also, many thanks to my eagle-eyed copy editor, Emily DeHuff.

My greatest debt, however, is to my devoted publisher, Sara Bershtel of Metropolitan Books, and to my two exacting editors, Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com and Sheila K. Johnson, my wife.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

A-10 “Warthog” aircraft

abortion

Abraham Lincoln, USS (aircraft carrier)

abstract expressionism

Abu Ghraib

Acquisition Streamlining Task Force

ADCS Inc.

Afghanistan. See also Afghan War; Anglo-Afghan wars; Soviet-Afghan War

Carter and

CIA and

civil war and Taliban takeover of

coups of 1973 and 1978

Pakistan and

Saudi Arabia and

Afghanistan (Dupree)

Afghan War (2001– )

cost of

Obama and

Pakistan and

Agency for International Development (USAID)

aircraft

aircraft carriers

Air Mobility Command

Albright, Madeleine

Alexander the Great

Algeria

Allende, Salvador

al-Qaeda

American Council for Cultural Policy

American Enterprise Institute

America Right or Wrong (Lieven)

Ames, Aldrich

Anderson, Frank

Anglo-Afghan wars

anti-Americanism

antiballistic missile ban

anti-ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) network

Arbenz, Jacobo

arc of instability

Arendt, Hannah

Argentina

Arjomand, Saïd

Armitage, Richard

arms sales

Army and Air Force Exchange Service

Assyrians

Auerback, Marshall

Augustus Caesar

Australia

automotive industry

Aviano Air Base (Italy)

Avrakotos, Gust

B-2 stealth bomber

B-52 bomber

Babylon

Bacevich, Andrew

Baghdad

Mongol invasion of

Baghdad International Airport

Baghdad National Museum

Bagram Air Base

Bahrain

Bahrani, Zainab

Baker, Dean

balance of powers

Bamiyan Buddhist statues

bank bailouts

Barnes, Julian

Barnett, Correlli

Barr, Jay

“Base Structure Reports,”

Bashur airfield

Batista, Fulgencio

Bay of Pigs invasion

Bearden, Milton

Belgrade Chinese embassy bombing

Benedict, Helen

Berger, Sandy

Berke, Richard L.

Berlin Wall, fall of

Berlusconi, Silvio

Beyond the Green Zone (Jamail)

Bhutto, Benazir

Bilbray, Brian

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, base

Bissell, Richard

Black, Cofer

black budgets

Blackwater

Blackwater (Scahill)

Blair, Tony

blowback

Blowback (Johnson)