OBAMA’S UNENDING WARS Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State

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“Kuzmarov’s book is serious and fair and should prompt historians — and the rest of us — to reevaluate Obama’s legacy.”
BRIAN D’HAESELEER, Washington Post

“In ways no one else has done, Kuzmarov punctures Obama’s phony liberal and humanitarian veneer and skillfully deconstructs the carefully crafted Obama creation myth…” PETER KUZNICK, co-author with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States

“Barack Obama seemed skeptical of militarism, but then bombed Libya & Syria, sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan & escalated Cold War with Russia. Why and how? Read Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State.”  STEPHEN KINZER
“Kuzmarov shows how many white progressives, who, in their anxiety to reject any racist appearance, embraced this warmongering president. Obama also convinced most African-Americans to give him leeway to do them justice, which he never did. ”  RON RIDENOUR, Black Agenda Report
“Kuzmarov’s latest is not just a disturbing look at Obama’s disastrous interventions abroad, it is a devastatingly clinical analysis of the cynical thinking that defines the Democratic Party’s foreign policy consensus – and of the public relations tactics the party’s leadership applies to sell it to their liberal base. As such, it is a critical guidebook to the 2020 primary field. “
MAX BLUMENTHAL, author of The Management of Savagery

“For all those liberals who have romanticized Barack Obama as an enlightened leader of the people, Jeremy Kuzmarov busts through such myths with a well-documented book showing Obama for what he was and is — the kind face of US imperial aggression.  This is a must-read for anyone believing that simply getting rid of Trump and returning to ‘normal’ is a way forward.”—DAN KOVALIK, author of The Plot to Control the World

“This important book is an urgent reminder that the forever wars of the United States are a bipartisan affair; in this in-depth study of the Obama presidency, Jeremy Kuzmarov documents the continued imperial domination policies and actions.”—ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
“Clarity Press is a good publisher for authors willing to provide real information in place of the officially sanctioned controlled explanations of our time. A current example is Jeremy Kuzmarov’s assessment of Obama, Obama’s Unending Wars. The forty-fourth president comes across as a successful front man for corporate rule and Washington’s imperialism.” PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

       

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Description

Many academics consider Obama to have been a master foreign policy strategist and shrewd practitioner of the art of realpolitik. This book demonstrates, however, that Obama in reality helped to institutionalize a permanent warfare state that resulted in gross human rights violations and contributed to America’s strategic decline. His perpetuation of the War on Terror created more enemies and prompted the United States to lose influence in the Middle East. His Pivot to Asia policy intensified prospects for regional war while his unnecessary and willful military intervention destroyed Libya and drew the Russians in to protect Bashir al-Assad who won Syria’s civil war. The Obama administration’s heavy-handed interference in Ukraine led to effective Russian counter-moves, promoting a strategic alliance with China  and regional integration that is moving the world towards multi-polarity.

Obama’s Unending Wars provides the first comprehensive critical history of the foreign policy of America’s forty-fourth president – the drone king who ordered the bombing of seven Muslim countries, backtracked on a pledge to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, and helped fuel a new Cold War with Russia. Obama during his years in office provided billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia as it assisted in the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain and invaded Yemen.  He sanctioned a coup in Honduras which plunged that country into chaos, perpetuated a failed drug war policy and contributed to the recolonization of Africa.

While any Democratic Party president would have faced peril in confronting the Pentagon which had carried out a slow coup d’état over the decades, Obama was rather, in many ways, the most perfect spokesman for the military-industrial complex. Who else but this articulate constitutional law professor could pull off  a pro-war speech after winning the Nobel Peace Prize while ramping up drone assassinations and America’s network of military bases in Africa and still retain the support of liberal-progressives?

As many in the time of Trump now glance nostalgically back to the Obama presidency, this book will help them to see the continuity — and continuous failure — of American foreign policy irrespective of the party or figurehead representing it.

Book Details

Dimensions N/A
Options

eBook, Paperback

ISBN

978-1-949762-00-6

EBOOK ISBN

978-1-949763-01-3

Year of publication

2019

Page count

329

Author

Jeremy Kuzmarov

Reviews

12 reviews for OBAMA’S UNENDING WARS Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State

  1. RON RIDENOUR

    “Kuzmarov’s impeccable and extensive research reveals the reality of Barack Obama’s eight presidential years favoring the economic and military-warring interests of the rich. Obama, the drone president, stood for seven aggressive wars, more than any other US president.
    The author peals the imperial white mask off the black skin in an analogy to Frantz Fanon’s classic work. Racism, colonization and contemporary neo-colonialization have distorted the psyches of all colors of peoples. Obama’s black Kenyan roots allowed him to do the white man’s bidding throughout Africa, and many other nations. While George Bush founded the US African Command (AFRICOM), in 2007, it was Obama, who set about implementing military (and economic) domination to 53 African governments.
    Kuzmarov shows how many white progressives, who, in their anxiety to reject any racist appearance, embraced this warmongering president. Obama also convinced most African-Americans to give him leeway to do them justice, which he never did.”
    —RON RIDENOUR, author of The Russian Peace Threat

  2. Jerry Lembcke

    “Written in muckraker fashion, Kuzmarov’s Obama’s Unending Wars is a bombshell blowing the progressive camo off the Obama presidency.” —JERRY LEMBCKE Author of Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

  3. ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ

    “This important book is an urgent reminder that the forever wars of the United States are a bipartisan affair; in this in-depth study of the Obama presidency, Jeremy Kuzmarov documents the continued imperial domination policies and actions.” —ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

  4. MAX BLUMENTHAL

    “Kuzmarov’s latest is not just a disturbing look at Obama’s disastrous interventions abroad, it is a devastatingly clinical analysis of the cynical thinking that defines the Democratic Party’s foreign policy consensus – and of the public relations tactics the party’s leadership applies to sell it to their liberal base. As such, it is a critical guidebook to the 2020 primary field.” —MAX BLUMENTHAL

  5. PETER KUZNICK

    “As a candidate, Barack Obama beguiled many of us into believing that he’d provide the desperately needed antidote to the American empire and national security state that we so fervently desired. Instead, as Jeremy Kuzmarov lays out in this extraordinary book, Obama doubled down on most of Bush and Cheney’s hawkish, confrontational, and surveillance-obsessed policies and helped pave the way for the current nightmare of Trumpian warmongering and perversity. In ways no one else has done, Kuzmarov punctures Obama’s phony liberal and humanitarian veneer and skillfully deconstructs the carefully crafted Obama creation myth, while laying bare the rot at the base of the Democratic Party and its decades of bipartisan, empire-affirming, militaristic policies, dating back to Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and culminating with the centrist troika of Obama, Clinton, and Biden.” —PETER KUZNICK

  6. ERIC WALBERG

    “In Obama’s Unending Wars, Kuzmarov has brought together many telling proofs, nuggets, of just how horrible the world is, and just how responsible the US and its henchmen around the world are. A kind of who-does-it. Kuzmarov is that rare analyst (Belen Fernandez is another) who respects footnotes, leaving fascinating bits there that would otherwise detract from his focus.” —ERIC WALBERG

  7. PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

    “Clarity Press is a good publisher for authors willing to provide real information in place of the officially sanctioned controlled explanations of our time. A current example is Jeremy Kuzmarov’s assessment of Obama, Obama’s Unending Wars. The forty-fourth president comes across as a successful front man for corporate rule and Washington’s imperialism.” PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/07/09/obama-front-man-for-washingtons-imperialism/

  8. DAVID SWANSON

    “If you want to review what Obama did in that quirky little area of his job to which some 60% of federal discretionary spending is devoted, and which puts us all at risk of nuclear disaster, pick up a copy of Jeremy Kuzmarov’s book Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State. Kuzmarov places Obama in historical context and outlines his parallels with Woodrow Wilson, another extreme militarist generally understood as a peace visionary. Kuzmarov reviews — and adds information that many of us probably never knew to — the story of Obama’s rise to power and the story of all of his many wars.” DAVID SWANSON

  9. BRIAN D’HAESELEER, Washington Post

    “Historians recently rated Barack Obama as the 12th best president in the nation’s history. On foreign policy, they lauded his pragmatism, multilateralism and internationalism. These traits all contrast favorably with his predecessor’s preference for unilateralism and “cowboy diplomacy” and his successor’s scorn for Washington’s traditional Western allies and for multilateral organizations such as NATO.

    But not everyone agrees. In the first comprehensive and critical analysis of Obama’s foreign policy, historian Jeremy Kuzmarov highlights Obama’s mistakes and reckless policies with consequences around the globe, especially the tensions with China and Russia that continue to escalate today. The book also advances a Leftist critique that is at odds with how mainstream historians view Obama.

    Like much of his previous scholarship, Kuzmarov brings a revisionist sensibility — like historians such as William Appleman Williams, who blamed Washington for the outbreak of the Cold War — to investigating the 44th president. He does not aim to offer “impartial” or “balanced” history; for him, such an approach has allowed former policymakers to escape culpability for mistakes that heightened tensions with other countries and led to human rights abuses and even military defeat.

    Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State, therefore, while an ambitious effort to analyze Obama’s foreign policy record, offers neither a nuanced nor empathetic appraisal of the former president. Nonetheless, Kuzmarov’s book is serious and fair and should prompt historians — and the rest of us — to reevaluate Obama’s legacy.” BRIAN D’HAESELEER, Washington Post

  10. RON RIDENOUR, Black Agenda Report

    “Kuzmarov’s impeccable and extensive research reveals the reality of Obama’s eight presidential years favoring the rich class’ economic and military-warring interests. Like a few other seminal books about the US Military Empire—Oliver Stone/Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the USA and Douglas Valentine The CIA & Organized Crime—this historian has read, skimmed through and compiled thousands of books and pertinent articles about his subject. One might dispute the author’s analysis or conclusions but an honest reader cannot dispute the facts with which he shows how jingoist, brutal and unjust US foreign policy is.

    Obama, the drone president, stood for seven aggressive wars at once, more than any other US president. In my view he was the worst president in US history, because he hypocritically offered hope to the downtrodden, the discriminated against and the general working population, all the while doing the rich white man’s dirty deeds. He beguiled these folks, and he could get away with it, namely, because he had black skin and a Harvard voice, which he used to cheat people of all colors and nations. (1)

    “He hypocritically offered hope to the downtrodden, all the while doing the rich white man’s dirty deeds.”

    Speaking to white and black readers sans condescension, Kuzmarov shows how many white progressives, who, in their anxiety to reject any racist appearance, embraced this warmongering president. Obama also convinced most African-Americans to give him leeway to do them justice, which he never did.” RON RIDENOUR, Black Agenda Report

  11. EDWARD CURTIN

    “How, for example, is it possible for so many people to see such a stark difference between the despicable Trump and the pleasant Obama? They are both puppets dancing to their masters’ tunes – the same masters. They both front for the empire.

    In his excellent book, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State, Jeremy Kuzmarov assiduously documents Obama’s crimes, including his CIA background.7 As Glen Ford, of Black Agenda Report, says in the first sentence of his forward, “Barack Obama may go down in presidential history as the most effective-and deceptive-imperialist of them all.” Read the book if you want all the details. They form an overwhelming indictment of the con artist and war criminal that is irrefutable. But will those who worship at the altar of Barack Obama read it?” EDWARD CURTIN, Dissident Voice

  12. WILL PODMORE

    “In this excellent book, Jeremy Kuzmarov, a history professor at Tulsa University, Oklahoma, shows how the Democratic Party’s leaders used Obama as cover for reactionary policies at home and abroad. Their liberal and humanitarian veneer tried to disguise the USA’s permanent warfare state.” WILL PODMORE, Workers https://www.cpbml.org.uk/news/democrats-permanent-war

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