What are the driving forces behind the Bush administration's tendency to war and militarism in general and the invasion of Iraq in particular? And why are Americans let to die, Hossein-zadeh asks, "not only because of horrendous lies, but even more appallingly, after those lies have been effectively exposed?"

To answer these questions, Hossein-zadeh goes beyond some of the most widely-held explanations: the ascendance to power of the neoconservative forces, the influence of the Israeli lobby, and the U.S. designs to gain access to more and cheaper sources of energy. Without denying the contributory roles of these factors, he points to a "more crucial force" behind the drive to war and militarism: the powerful beneficiaries of arms industries and related influential interests that are vested in the business of war and military expansion. In The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism, Hossein-Zadeh argues for the vindication of President Eisenhower's prescient warning that the military-industrial-complex would cause the Pentagon spending to be driven not by "national interests" or "security needs" but by a network of "weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials."

A salient feature of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism is that it goes beyond the criticism of the unilateral policies of the Bush administration. It suggests the views that tend to blame the Bush administration for all the recently heightened militaristic tendencies need to be tempered against the evidence that the major components of the neoconservative agenda were designed long before George W. Bush arrived in the White House.

Another distinct feature of Hossein-zadeh's book is that, unlike most similar titles, it cautions against attributing all the power and influence of the neoconservative forces to pure ideology. Instead, it focuses on real special interests that lie behind the front and the rhetoric of the cabal of neoconservatives.

A major advantage of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism is that it shows that the economic costs of the recent unilateral wars of choice go beyond the unprecedented budget gaps they have created. More importantly, the escalating military spending at the expense of non-military public spending is steadily undermining the long-term national objectives of infrastructure or public capital formation, both physical and human. Furthermore, Hossein-zadeh shows how the rising Pentagon budget is used as a regulatory mechanism to redistribute national income or resources in favor of the wealthy. He also shows that unilateral wars of aggression are costing non-military U.S. transnational capital external sales markets and investment outlets as a result of various economic blowbacks, especially consumer backlashes, abroad.

The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism offers much food for thought for anyone concerned with the destructive bent of U.S. foreign policy. Although it appears as an academic book, it is equally appealing and accessible to informed general public interested in learning about the forces behind the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Kamran Nayeri, Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley