Portside

The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections. This contest matters. It is the election for the most powerful leader in the Western world, and some - like the Economist Intelligence Unit - regard Donald Trump as a major risk to global prosperity and stability. As citizens of one of the world’s oldest democracies, Americans like to think that the United States provides an influential role model for how elections should run in other countries.

From retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, a powerful portrait of how, in the decades after the Vietnam War, a post-democratic U.S. military became a reality and of the kind of permanent war making it freed Washington to be involved in. It couldn’t be a more vivid account of the ways in which such a military encouraged privatization, cashing in, and secrecy as a way of life and how that way of life rose to such prominence and power in Washington.