Understanding the U.S. War State
by John McMurtry
Science for Peace, April 2003.
www.globalresearch.ca 2 May 2003
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MCM305A.html
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Executive Summary
John McMurtry’s Understanding the U.S. War State (2003) offers a comprehensive critique of U.S. militarism and its systemic drivers, situating the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan within a larger historical and structural context. Rather than interpreting these events as isolated political missteps, McMurtry frames them as expressions of a recurring U.S. pattern: pursuing imperial objectives under the guise of defending freedom, security, and democracy.
1. Historical Continuity of Imperial Expansion
McMurtry traces the lineage of U.S. militarism back to the 19th-century conquest of indigenous peoples and neighboring territories, showing that aggressive foreign policy has long been justified through moral rhetoric. From the seizure of Mexican territories to the Philippines and Puerto Rico, wars of occupation have repeatedly been presented as civilizing missions.
2. The Iraq War as Case Study
The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq represents, for McMurtry, a culmination of the “war state” logic:
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False pretexts: Weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism were fabricated to justify aggression.
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Resource control: Iraq’s publicly owned oil reserves and their conversion to Euros threatened U.S. financial dominance.
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Targeting civil commons: U.S. policy prioritized corporate control of resources over Iraqi sovereignty, dismantling public systems of food, healthcare, and education.
3. Media, Propaganda, and Manufactured Consent
McMurtry highlights the complicity of mainstream media in legitimizing wars through a constant cycle of fear and demonization of designated enemies. Echoing Hermann Goering’s dictum, war propaganda mobilizes populations while silencing dissent, reframing aggression as defense and occupation as liberation.
4. The “Ruling Group-Mind”
A central analytical contribution of the paper is the concept of the “ruling group-mind,” a collective presuppositional framework regulating political discourse and public consciousness. It rests on five unspoken assumptions:
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America = the national security state.
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America = the source of global freedom and goodness.
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America is always right by definition.
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Opponents of U.S. policy are evil.
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Preemptive force is justified to eliminate perceived threats.
This ideological structure preconditions perception, erases legal and ethical boundaries, and perpetuates systemic wars of choice.
5. Implications for International Law and Global Order
McMurtry warns that U.S. actions undermine the foundations of international law by normalizing wars of aggression while holding others accountable to norms it violates. The result is a dangerous asymmetry: a self-exempt “war state” acting above the law, destabilizing collective security frameworks, and accelerating global disorder.
Conclusion
McMurtry positions the U.S. war state as a systemic phenomenon rooted in structural imperatives — corporate power, control of resources, and ideological exceptionalism — rather than contingent political decisions. Without confronting the concealed assumptions sustaining this “group-mind,” the cycle of militarized intervention and imperial domination risks perpetuating itself indefinitely, eroding international governance and exacerbating global conflict.