Roots of War Barnet, Richard

Richard Barnet cuts through Cold War rhetoric to examine what actually drives nations to war. Not ideology or defense, he argues, but bureaucratic inertia, economic interests, and the self-perpetuating machinery of the national security state. Writing in the 1970s — peak Vietnam disillusionment — Barnet draws on his time inside the Kennedy administration to expose how war becomes policy default. He traces how military budgets justify themselves, how threat inflation becomes institutional habit, and how the people making decisions are often the least affected by their consequences. It's a sharp, unsentimental look at the structures that make peace harder to choose than conflict. For readers interested in political economy, military history, or understanding why wars keep happening despite nobody really wanting them.