Drift by Rachel Maddow: book review

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (2012) is an account of America’s military history and developmnent from the end of the Vietnam War (1955-1975) to the end of the Iraq War in (2003-2011) and the Afghanistan War (2001 to the time of her writing in 2011, which continued to 2021).

Rachel Maddow claims that America has drifted away from its original peace time goals to ‘being at peace with perpetual war.’ She details presidential war time decisions, particularly from Lyndon B Johnson to Ronald Reagan, and George H W Bush to his son George W Bush – the decision to go to war, the human costs, the financial costs, and the aftermaths.

Mostly, she explores the position of executive authority – exactly which individuals make the decisions, and who made the decision to outsource the war-making capabilities to private American companies. She also looks at the rise and fall of citizen support for war – often told through the rise and fall of the popularity of the combat doll G.I. Joe, launched in 1964 during the Vietnam War.

Much of Rachel Maddow’s writing is serious and provocative, but it is also witty, funny, and sarcastic too, as she seeks to answer who, what, when, where, why, how, and by what means America goes to war – and how far its war policy has drifted away from peace.

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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