“Ramp up the threat index to severe! Pursue your Orwellian dream of selling war as peace! In this satirical gem, Coyne and Hall skewer the would-be warmongers among us.”
How to Run Wars
A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Elite
Description
A copy of the top-secret memo below recently came into our hands, and we thought we should bring it to your attention!
“Dear National Security Elite:
In an ideal world, the public would simply accept whatever their leaders—you, in other words—told them. They would comply with restrictions and mandates, not as a matter of mere obedience, but as a matter of unquestionable patriotic duty.
But we don’t live in an ideal world.
And with the fate of the world, especially the world’s wars, in the hands of our enlightened, benevolent, and eminently responsible national security elite—in your hands, in other words—we can’t afford to risk opening the conversation to an informed public.
And we certainly can’t risk asking for anything so antiquated as “consent,” either.
Not when the stakes are this high.
You simply must learn:
- How to control the narrative—every narrative—in your favor;
- How to completely capture the media and effectively quash dissent;
- How destroying liberty creates more liberty in the long (long) run;
- Why top-down economic planning, here and abroad, is your best friend;
- How to flout international, and of course domestic, law and get away with it;
- And much, much more...
The danger with any book like this is, obviously, that it may fall into the wrong hands. If any member of the general public should happen upon these pages, the consequences would be fatal.
After all, people may realize that the national security elite—you, in other words—are not, in fact, all-powerful harbingers of peace...
They may realize that you are, literally, a force for good... armed and relentlessly attempting to bend the planet to your noble will.
And that realization would be nothing short of disastrous.
Don’t let this book fall into the wrong hands!”
Merciless in their penetrating analysis, Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail Hall have written the satirical portrait of America’s contemporary military-industrial complex. Drawing inspiration from the 1936 classic How to Run a War, by Bruce W. Knight, this book is a must-read for anyone who would know the truth about America’s endless wars and the people who run them....
The truth might just set us free.
It will certainly make you laugh.
Then—really angry.
Reviews
“An essential and timely contribution to the debate on U.S. foreign policy. I smiled in recognition as each ridiculous claim was skewered, and often laughed out loud at the droll, straight-faced accuracy of the account. But then, immediately, and as with all great satire, I was brought up short: actually, this is not funny. The views being skewered here are all real. Without the kind of close scrutiny you’ll find in How to Run Wars, those destructive and corrosive views will continue to dominate American military doctrine unchallenged.”
“How to Run Wars works by saying the quiet part out loud. Some readers, even in the liberty movement, might interpret the book literally, without realizing that it is a highly skilled pasquinade, pure lampoonery of the national security state’s duplicitous dupes and many minions. It’s a Babylon Bee for PhDs, a deeply layered onion of dark humor and satirical insight into the destruction of America by the very people charged with protecting it. Be prepared to laugh, and cry.”
“Proponents of American hegemony argue that global military interventionism is necessary to protect freedom, liberalism, democracy, and a rules-based international order. But what does it take to run a ‘liberal empire’? Economists Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall have spent years studying the American national security state. In this book, they explain how to succeed as a member of the national security elite. Doing so requires propaganda, mendacity, repression of dissent, gross violations of civil liberties, willingness to sacrifice human lives, and flagrant violations of international law. In other words, liberal empire entails violating the very liberal principles it purports to protect. If you want to understand the ugly truths about militarism, this book is a great place to start.”