Commentary by Sergey Lededev, The Multiplural World, April 17, 2025
The collective wisdom of the Internet has calculated that the United States has been at war 92% of the time during its existence, or 225 years out of 243. These calculations are hardly flawless from a methodological point of view, but few would question the thesis that the United States is in a nearly permanent state of war.
(Sergey Lededev is a lecturer at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, in Moscow. This commentary was first published in the Russia daily newspaper Vzglyad on April 17, 2025. Enhanced translation to English is by The Multiplural World using machine translation.)
One of the commonplaces of critics of American foreign policy has become the thesis of eternal wars. Moreover, in recent years, it has begun to be used not only by Washington’s external opponents, but also by political insiders, especially among the Republicans.
The collective wisdom of the Internet has calculated that the United States has been at war 92% of the time during its existence, that is, 225 years out of 243 (data for 2020). These calculations are hardly flawless from a methodological point of view, but few experts will question the thesis that the United States is in an almost permanent state of war.
There are various explanations for this, sometimes quite exotic. For example, in Foreign Policy magazine, one of the authors suggested that American foreign policy thinking is extremely archaic; war is a form of foreign policy ritual and a kind of cult. Despite the fact that this sounds like the plot of a fantasy novel, there is a grain of truth in it – at least some American politicians really believe that the United States was elected to deliver freedom and prosperity to the whole world. However, while such ideologically charged elements are present in almost any political machine (sometimes they are called “useful idiots”), they will not go far without an economic framework.
American political researcher and conservative publicist Richard Hanania has suggested focusing on the economic aspect of “eternal wars” in his 2021 book Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy (published by Routledge). His main idea is that the U.S. military-industrial complex has enormous political resources and actually lobbies for a state of permanent participation in conflicts. There is no doubt that companies like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon are extremely interested in creating and sustaining military conflicts. However, what is interesting is how exactly do they do it? The author replies, “By influencing the country’s leadership through public opinion and pushing their people into power.”
The key figure determining U.S. foreign policy (taking into account all the checks and balances) is, of course, the president. And here we must understand that American politics and the mechanisms of the struggle for power that exist there are a filter that lets through a very specific type of person – most often extremely charismatic, able to persuade, make deals and reconcile major players. Does this list include a deep knowledge and understanding of foreign policy? No. Presidents and presidential candidates have no particular incentive to delve into these issues. The American president is a person who, first and foremost, knows how to flirt with public opinion, and is also forced to follow it in many ways. The maximum term of stay in the Oval Office is 8 years, during which time there is no opportunity to formulate any intelligible long-term geostrategic program and, most importantly, wait for it to begin to bear fruit. Therefore, most of the White House owners prefer to follow public opinion, which means that by influencing public opinion, one can also influence any American president – including on foreign policy issues.
This is precisely why U.S. defense companies are so willing to create think tanks and feed foreign policy experts who, in turn, shape public opinion. In this regard, the most scandalous is probably the neoconservative foundation Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which has released much analytical materials that vary in the degree of ideological content but always boil down ultimately to calls to expand and deepen the American military presence around the world (and what else could the Project for the New American Century call for?). But what is interesting is not so much what they wrote as their personnel policy. By pure coincidence, one of the project’s directors, Bruce Jackson, also held the post of vice president for strategy and planning at Lockheed Martin, one of the White House’s key defense contractors. Paul Wolfowitz, who served as the first deputy secretary of defense in the first administration of George W. Bush, is also considered closely associated with PNAC (although the exact level of affiliation is difficult to understand). Interestingly, Wolfowitz also served in the Bush administration as an undersecretary of defense for policy and was one of the authors of the document known as the Wolfowitz Memorandum.
An important point is that such analytical funds and experts do not so much actually reorient American public opinion as they create the illusion of a pro-war consensus in American society, which is already being promoted by senior officials.
As we know, the retinue makes the king, so in addition to public opinion, there is also a huge number of Pentagon bureaucrats and legislators who need to be fed. In fact, what is called an iron triangle of power has developed between them – officials from the military department are interested in expanding funding; senators are partly ideological, partly in need of money; and defense companies want new government contracts.
Research conducted by the Quincy Institute has shown that 80% of retired American four-star generals and admirals do not go fishing and play with their grandchildren after retirement. They acquire jobs in defense companies as consultants or board members. People who have risen to such ranks understand perfectly well what is required of them. They begin to exaggerate in their reports foreign policy threats as much as possible (political scientists call this ‘threat inflation’), so that increasing the military budget seems adequate and necessary.
American lawmakers (those who are not fanatics) fall into a similar money trap. A recent journalistic investigation showed that at least 15 American senators and representatives responsible for defense have themselves invested in military companies, which means they have vested interests in the development of their businesses. Other lawmakers, who avoid such an obvious conflict of interest, nevertheless keep in mind the thought that their political career may one day end and is comforting for them to understand that they have powerful friends who will not abandon them; they will arrange for them to join some pocket research center with a very good salary.
‘Eternal wars’ may be an ideology for some, but first and foremost it is a well-established system that has been in place for many years. It is difficult to imagine that someone even in the highest position and with the best of intentions could overcome this system.
