Ismael Hossein-zadeh. The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Adams, Fred
• Date: 22 June 2007

Ismael Hossein-zadeh. The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian, 2006. Hardcover, $75.

In a well-written and very readable book, Ismael Hossein-zadeh seeks to provide answers to two questions: Why have U.S. citizens been unable to receive any "peace dividends," especially once the Cold War came to an end. The other is why have American leaders been so inclined to resort to the use of military force (and plenty of it, as their fondness for the "shock and awe" approach attests) to settle international disputes. His answers are inspired by the earlier work of Sidney Lens on the military-industrial complex and of Ernest Mandel on the periodization of capitalism.

Hossein-zadeh presents two lines of argument, ones that co-exist a little uneasily. The first, and dominant, theme is that in the latter part of the 20th century, the U.S. entered a new era of capitalist development in which parasitic imperialism replaced benign imperialism. Whereas in the earlier era leaders of capitalist nations used military force only after concluding that they could obtain economic benefits by doing so, in the new era they used force as a way to guarantee that the military-industrial complex could claim a larger share of the public treasury. The application of military power no longer was a means to an end: it had become the end itself.

The growing power of the military-industrial complex is the reason why the new form of imperialism appeared. With its base in the...