Sublime

US leaders brought counterinsurgency out of the pre-independence period into the new republic, imprinting on the fledgling federal army a way of war with formidable consequences for the continent and the world.

The first transformed Europe from a region where legitimacy was derived from religious faith and dynastic inheritance to an order based on the sovereign equality of secular states and bent on spreading its precepts around the globe. Three centuries later, the Second Thirty Years’ War challenged the entire international system to overcome

In Vietnam, Ike took the lead and kept the United States out of war. In Iran, he listened to the advice that bubbled up from below and authorized the CIA-directed coup that ousted Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s legitimately elected prime minister, terminating democratic government in Teheran and installing what became the twenty-five-year dictatorship

During the twenty years from 2001 to 2021, the US government spent between $6 and $8 trillion on invasions, surveillance, and efforts to shadowbox with elusive enemies. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that over three hundred thousand civilians may have died from war-related violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and neighboring Pakistan,