Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War

Empire of Defense tells the story of how the United States turned war into defense. When the Truman administration dissolved the Department of War in 1947 and formed the Department of Defense, it marked not the end of conventional war but, Joseph Darda argues, the introduction of new racial criteria for who could wage it--for which countries and communities could claim self-defense.

From the formation of the DOD to the long wars of the twenty-first century, the United States rebranded war ...