Drift: the unmooring of American military power

by Rachel Maddow

When Thomas Jefferson spoke of ‘never keeping an unnecessary soldier’, neither he nor America’s other founding fathers could have envisaged the national security state that the country has become. They could not have imagined its tens of thousands of ‘privateers’; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine.

Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow’s Drift argues that America has drifted away from its original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today’s war in Afghanistan, exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American soldiers in the military, and even the changing fortunes of GI Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we all stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower political discourse.

Sensible yet provocative, deadly serious yet seriously funny, Drift has already reinvigorated a political debate about how, when, and where America’s strength and power should be applied — and who gets to make those decisions.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, War, Audiobook, Military Fiction, American History

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 27, 2012

About the author

Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award–winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power; Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth; and Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suppose they gave a war and no one protested?

That sounds like heaven on earth for some politicos, some military leaders and a whole lot of contractors who have been growing Jabba-the-Hutt chunky on public dollars.

Rachel Maddow, the most charming, and surely one of the brightest political commentators on the scene, has written a thoughtful analysis of how we got from what, in law if not always in practice, was a disinclination towards war, to the current state of affairs in which presidents can pretty much lock and load at will.

The founders feared that maintaining [a standing army] would drain our resources in the same way that maintaining the eighteenth-century British military had burdened the colonies. They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army would create too much of a temptation to use it. Those worries about the inevitable incentives to war were part of what led to the division of government at the heart of our Constitution, building into the structure of our new country a deliberate peaceable bias.

But in the past generation or two, we’ve drifted off that historical course. The steering’s gone wobbly, the brakes have failed. It’s not a conspiracy, there aren’t rogue elements pushing us to subvert our national interests to instead serve theirs. It’s been more entertaining and boneheaded than that.

There are two general brakes on war-making, Congress guarding its power and the people resisting the call of leaders for citizens to fight and maybe die fighting on foreign soil without offering a very persuasive argument.


Rachel Maddow - image from Marin Independent Journal

Maddow makes a point about the erosion of Congressional power re war. There’s that pesky old Constitution thing that reserves the power to declare war for Congress, not the president. Tsk, tsk, how inconvenient. We can’t have a president’s hands tied. Congress has actually declared war, or authorized words to that effect, for only five wars anyway. However, the USA has fought over a hundred wars run with the sole authority of the executive, so Constitution, Schmonstitution, the 1973 War Powers Act notwithstanding.

She pays particular attention to the fun times of the Reagan Administration when ignoring, undemining, steam-rolling out of existence and subverting explicit Congressional intentions became a sort of sport for those in the executive office. But don’t think that there is any sort of partisanship going on here. The truth is what it is, and Maddow is more than happy to point out the many instances in which Democratic presidents did their best to utilize and preserve the expanded powers their Republican predecessors carved out for the office. If you are looking for evidence of partisan bias, a supportive quote from Roger Ailes on the back cover should dispel any concern. This is a scholarly examination of a clear and present danger, independent of party or ideological affiliation.

She looks at the rise of what is known as the unitary executive, that was promoted by a cabal of wing-nuts into what we recognize today as current reality. That is fascinating, but I do wish Maddow had offered a bit more on how often presidents just did what they wanted to in a longer historical view, Congress be damned.

And there are other ways that Congress, even with their war-declaring power effectively gelded, can make trouble, oversight committees and the like. Well, how about shifting the military actions into areas that Congress can see, but will not be able to talk about? Check. With much military work now being performed by the CIA, when oversight committees actually find out what is going on, they are barred from telling anyone because the information is, you know, secret. All freedoms burn so nicely on the pyre of national security, or claims of national security anyway.

Then there’s the populace. What keeps war from being popular? Well, one thing is if it is you or your kids who are on the receiving end of the incomings, or having to cope with those irritating IEDs. So, if we want to keep the public out of this arena, it helps to eliminate the draft. We don’t want noisemakers, or people who actually matter to have a personal reason to get their panties in a bunch about our diplomacy by other means.

What else? There is a way of waging war that requires the introduction of massive force. Known as the Powell Doctrine, this approach required the use of large numbers of troops and hardware, all at once. Better, if you want to keep things on the down-low to use as few troops as possible. Parallel to this is another war-planning notion, The Abrams Doctrine, a product of the Viet Nam war, in which the military felt that they had been separated from the civilian population, and thus were disregarded. It held that in times of war the nation should rely not just on the members of our standing military, but should summon member of the Reserves and National Guard. That gets noticed by the population, as family members are called to the battlefield, having to vacate actual jobs. So what might the canny political war planner do to mitigate such a negative effect? One thing would be to reduce the military personnel required to wage war. Instead of, say, Sergeant Cookie Jowls, spending his time peeling potatoes and preparing meals, the army might hire a contractor to take care of that. Instead of, say, Private B Bailey, getting stuck with laundry duty, soldiers might drop their blood-stained dainties off at the KBR-o-Mat. And if you are in the advanced class, you might start using private contractors for actual fighting. Xe-ing is believing. The folks back home tend to get a lot more upset about the death of a 19-year-old kid next door than they do about the demise of a 35-year-old South African mercenary.

So, keep wars out of the public consciousness. Keep Congress from futzing with every shiny new war opportunity that comes along. Maddow shows how these twin developments have come to pass. She has also included fascinating reportage on how and when the percentage of our spending on the military shot up to its current stratospheric levels. She looks at some ongoing defense issues, such as coping with aging nuclear hardware, how the huge quantities of money being spent on the military come at the expense of other domestic needs, how peace may sound nice but does not do so well as a political plank, and there is a wonderful section on the training of the Great Communicator.

I have a few gripes about Drift. I wish that Maddow had dedicated more space to the impact of media on shaping public consciousness. A mention of Judy Miller might have been appropriate. Or maybe a bit on how the Fox News network has acted as nothing less than a mouthpiece for right-wing Republican interests. I know that she has written an analysis of history that looks at events and tries to perceive their impact, and that she is probably concerned that her work will be painted as partisan hackery by the right, but, Ailes’ quote notwithstanding, the right will assail anything she produces, even a shopping list, as partisan hackery. I am reminded of the foolishness of President Obama attempting to come to reasonable compromises with the bomb-throwers of Tea Party persuasion who had taken the Republican Party captive. (As of this edit, 2024, it is the MAGAs who so ably fill those obstructive shoes) You are wasting your time. Nothing you can say will ever get through the brain-reality barriers that have been erected here. Have at it.

I was surprised that there was no mention of President Eisenhauer’s speech, the one in which he said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

I thought that the many non-Congress-ok’d wars that preceded Viet Nam deserved a bit more of a mention. The current emasculation of Congress does not seem all that new when one looks at the long historical view.

So, I would say that her analysis is fascinating, but less than complete. Maybe in a follow up?

She offers a passel of policy suggestions at the end of the book. One includes paying for wars as we fight them, using taxes or bonds. Um, isn’t a bond a loan? How is that different from garden-variety federal fund-raising? She suggests that we move all actual military options back under the military, taking them away from info-blackout organizations like the CIA. This, like the rest, are commonsensical. They are not no-brainers in the world of political reality, given the existence of powerful special interests which have a vested interest in things continuing as they are. But it would be hard to argue against, say, reducing our nuclear infrastructure to what we actually need.

Maddow certainly offers a clear timeline, and I can see how one can view the changes that have occurred as drift, but it seems to me that a vessel that is drifting is being passively moved from one place to another by unconscious natural forces, like tides and currents. In the case of fast-tracking our war-making capacity, it seems that the forces involved have been anything but natural. What is likelier is that we have been pushed into our current unmoored state by forces with a strong interest in promoting endless war. (Maybe Tug, Push or Prod would have been more fitting titles?) It would be a good thing for us to push back lest we find ourselves sinking, in shark-infested waters.

=================================LINKS

GR friend Elizabeth pointed out in comment #15 a lovely NPR interview with Maddow, and has ok'd inclusion of the link here. There is a lot of interesting material there. So thanks, Elizabeth.

This is the site for Rachel's show on MSNBC

5/26/13 - The following New York Times op ed, Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart, By Karl W. Eikenberry and David M. Kennedy is definitely worth a look

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a big Rachel Maddow fan for more than twelve years, from back in the Air America “Unfiltered” days when she was partnered with Chuck D. and Lizz Winstead. I began to listen to her faithfully as soon as she was given a 5 A.M. hour news show, and I have been listening and watching ever since, with a proprietary, almost fatherly, interest. Sure, she preaches to the choir, and often--particularly in the first quarter of her show--she lectures like a schoolmarm, but her intelligence is so penetrating, and she delivers her pessimistic analysis with such positive energy and humor, that I invariably leave her show with more hope and more determination that I had when I arrived.

That being said, I must confess that I wasn't really expecting much out of her book. She has often said that she doesn't enjoy the act of writing—that “it makes her crazy”--and as a general rule the books of TV personalities—no matter how intelligent and perceptive they may be—are seldom weighty or memorable.

I was wrong. “Drift” is a fine book” pithy, economical, stylistically pleasing, and informed by an interesting thesis.

One of the reasons I have always liked Maddow is that she is too broad-minded for polemics and too level-headed for conspiracy theory, and the significance of her title is a clear indication of this. She shows all the ways in which our military establishment has “drifted” further from the moorings of democratic control until it has become bloated, inefficient and unmanageable.

Many things have contributed to this trend: presidential usurpation of congressional power, an increase in small undeclared “police actions”, the privatization of support functions, the proliferation of “contractors” (read “mercenaries”), the growing use of the CIA for drone strikes and other covert military missions, the expansion of military functions to include activities formerly allocated to that State Department or the Peace Corps, an increasing reliance on the National Guard as if it were the regular army, and the growing burden of an unnecessarily large and decaying nuclear infrastructure.

Maddow argues that none of this is part of some larger design, that no conspiracy is involved. It has happened--and is still happening--because particular presidents (of both parties) desired some international objective and choose the path of least resistance to accomplish it. She bolsters her thesis with scores of interesting anecdotes and arguments, expressed in forthright, often colloquial prose.

The hopeful part? If this is indeed a “drift” and not a conspiracy, it can be reversed by an attentive concerned public. The military may be drifting away from our comprehension and control, but with time—and hope and determination—we Americans can reverse the trend.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent six years on active duty in the Air Force and I dealt with some of the material the author talks about towards the end of the book regarding America's nuclear program. I want to commend the author on her research, she is spot-on with the facts and gives IMO an accurate view of what is wrong and how to fix it.

The author does a very good job of showing how the military drifted to what it is now where civilians don't feel the burden of war because the President (all recent modern Presidents, not just Obama) shield us from the loss of lives, the separations that military families go through, and the heartache of war because it's bad PR (among many other reasons, not just what I've mentioned). And if only a small percentage of American's have to feel that burden and the whole country isn't involved like it was in WWII, than the population is more allowing of the decade long mess that we are still involved in today, or recently with Iraq.

I learned so much from this book on complaints I had while I was in the service, like why are contractors doing the work that we can do ourselves? This complaint was shared with many of my co-workers. Some contractors were doing the exact same job that somebody in the military was doing with double the paycheck. This book tells us why it came to be that way.

I can't recommend this book enough for anybody currently serving in the military. It is very unbiased, very informing, and only through awareness can better decisions be made.

[Stephanie *Eff your feelings* · Rating 5 out of 5]

My dream Democratic presidential ticket for 2016 would include Rachel Maddow. I’m thinking if Joe Biden doesn’t want to do it (and I don’t think he does) then Al Franken, John Stewart or Stephen Colbert should be the other half. That would be an entertaining and smart duo to run the country. Maybe Colbert would be the smartest pick since his satire is so genius it might fool a few on the right to vote for him.

Everyone should read this book. It’s a non partisan commentary, it takes to task the presidency itself and how it has changed from what the founders envisioned it to be. And it’s really fucking scary.

Let’s start off with the invasion of Granada, Operation Urgent Fury, (good God, does that mean I’m in a big damn hurry to be angry) in 1983. At that time I was way too deep in a fog of Aqua Net to be politically aware. I have a vague memory of it happening but the details were fuzzy. Apparently Ronald Reagan, during World War II, was in the military but was too near sighted to actually fight in it. He was given the job of “playing” a soldier in training films (produced by the military) and never left the studio back lot he had been working on since before he joined. He played a gung-ho-rata-tat-tat-shoot-em-up-bang-bang-gotcha soldier, and he liked it. When he got to the White House (early Alzheimer’s sadly was likely affecting him) he had that deep seeded need to be that macho cowboy soldier and wanted to get those Commies. In Granada he saw some Commies (possible-maybe-someday Commies) a military coup ousted a revolutionary government and became a bit touchy and unstable, ripe for Commies.

Regan new that he would never get congress to Ok a strike on Granada (because it was nutty) , so he did an end run around congress, went ahead with it, and told them it was happening when it was too late. Tip O’Neal was rightly pissed. From the very start of this nation no one person could declare war on another country. Congress has to OK such actions. But Regan didn’t think the president should bow down to congress, so he basically gave them the middle finger. This set a dangerous precedent.

Then there was Iran-Contra, where Reagan tried to get the ok from congress to take action to free hostages in Iran. Congress cut funding to the operation. Unable to take no for an answer, Regan decided to solicit other countries for money. One way of getting cash was by selling weapons, which he did to any country (no matter how sketchy) that would pay, like Saudi Arabia and Iran. WTF? He got caught and “communicated” his way out of the mess. Shocking.

Since, all of the following presidents have used their executive power to make war, against the founding fathers express instructions that no one person should be able to take the country into war. All (the current president does love his drones). It’s just too easy and no president wanted to give up that ability.

War sucks.

Currently the way we go to war (and it’s been perpetual for some time now) is insulated from the general public, unless you are a family member of a soldier. Troops are re deployed over and over, this has been devastating on their emotional health. In the first five years of the Iraq war the suicide rate of military personnel doubled. In the last ten years we have lost more troops to suicide then in combat. Something is wrong here. The Reserves are not used as reserves anymore, they are no longer civilian soldiers, and they are called up to war just as often as the regular military. We use contractors extensively. There are currently more contractors in Afghanistan then US military. They are not bound by the military for their conduct, they are paid better then the troops and we never hear of their deaths. It doesn’t affect us, so we don’t yell about it much.

Nuclear Bombs………you do not want to go into that particular stinky restroom, peeeeuuuuu.

-We have lost track of 11 nuclear bombs, and we keep track better than most countries. Yikes. Currently there is a nuclear bomb buried in a swampy field in Goldsboro North Carolina, it was too swampy to dig it out so they just left it there. Yay. Currently we have aging bombs in silos that we no longer remember how to fix properly, some have wing fungus.

It’s amazing to me each day we get through without becoming a giant smoking crater.

Here is the end of the epilogue which sums the whole thing up nicely.

“And finally there’s the Gordian knot of executive power. It needs a sword something fierce. The glory of war success will always attach itself to the president, so presidents are always be prey to the temptation to make war. That’s a generic truth of power, and all the more reason to take the decision making about war out of the hands of the executive. It is not one man’s responsibility. The “Imperial Presidency” malarkey that was invented to save Ronald Reagan’s neck in Iran-Contra, and that has played as high art throughout the career of Richard Cheney, is a radical departure from previous views of presidential power, and should be taught and understood that way. This is not a partisan thing. Constitutionalists left and right have equal reason to worry over the lost constraint of the executive. Republicans and Democrats alike have options to vote people into congress who are determined to stop with the chickenshitery and assert the legislators constitutional purgatives on war and peace. It would make a difference, and help reel us back towards balance and normalcy. None of this is impossible. This isn’t bigger than us. Decisions about national security are ours to make. And the good news is this isn’t rocket science, we don’t have to reinvent fogbank here, we just have to revive that old idea of America is a deliberately peaceable nation. That’s not simply our inheritance, it’s our responsibility.”

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you too relaxed? Are you worryingly unworried, and sleeping far too easily? Do you labour under the belief that the checks and balances in the US system of government will prevent dangerous/idiotic presidents from invading countries willy-nilly and drone-striking you in retaliation for your critical facebook comments?

If this sounds like you, then Rachel Maddow's Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power is the antidote to your serenity! Build a bunker, delete your social media accounts and prepare to lie awake at night - Maddow reveals how a system of government designed to prevent one person declaring war has largely failed, leaving decisions of life, death and international destruction in one (currently tiny) pair of hands.

Seriously though, this is some scary stuff, and Maddow tells her story well.

The founders of the US, and the authors of the Constitution, specifically designed the American system of government to avoid the concentration of war powers in the hands of the president. Congress was given the authority to declare war, forcing the executive branch of government to seek congressional approval before diving into conflicts. People like Thomas Jefferson were concerned that their new republic could get caught up in an unending spiral of war, with Americans dying at the whim of king-like presidents who used conflict as a political ploy to shore up their support. Hell, some of these guys fought against even having a standing army at all, and Jefferson himself cut the army by a third during his presidency.

As you have no doubt guessed this hasn't quite worked out as the founding fathers planned (hello Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again). Over many decades the checks and balances between the executive and the legislature have atrophied, and the US president today has near complete power to wage war, to send soldiers overseas and to order drone strikes anywhere in the world. Even worse, El Presidente can do so in near complete secrecy if he/she desires. Naturally, this power has been abused by leaders both Republican and Democratic.

Along the way to Imperial Presidency the military has become massively outsourced, allowing wars to be waged with minimal numbers of actual American soldiers (which makes it easier to sell to the public) and much more secretive. The CIA has also become massively more powerful, able to act in some senses as a secret military force that presidents can use and abuse with almost no oversight, even from Congress. On top of this, military spending, and near continual spending increases, has become near sacred, and it would be a brave government that dared to reverse this trajectory.

Maddow's book is engrossing, important and something that should appeal to die-hard constitutionalists and peaceniks alike, even though it's conclusions are pretty damn grim. Maddow paints a picture of a situation that would seem difficult, if not near impossible to reverse. The military has grown so large, and is so central to US policy, that it is beyond effective oversight. The US defence budget is so stupendously massive, employs so vast a number of people, is linked to so numerous a list of private companies that its complexity is almost impossible to grasp, and it is near impregnable to oversight or trimming. The President’s power has grown so large, and Congress has abdicated so many of its constitutional privileges, that challenging or changing the status quo would require a drawn out political fight that would no doubt damage both institutions.

I hope for the sake of the long suffering US taxpayer, for the sake of the long-suffering US soldier and for the sake of the rest of us here on earth who have to deal with the sometimes catastrophic missteps of the White House that the people of the USA are one day able to bring their president and their mighty military back under the sort of oversight that their founding fathers intended.

Postscript: Maddow also details the terrifying realities of the US’ decaying nuclear arsenal, and the vast costs associated with maintaining it. Her book is a good companion piece for Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

[Sineala · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am sure I will lose all credibility in the eyes of anyone reading this if I admit I originally picked it up due to my giant and long-standing crush on Rachel Maddow. Let's not say that, then, shall we?

Drift is, basically, a book about how come it's so easy for the US to go to war these days, which I have to admit is something that I have occasionally wondered. It's well-written, well-supported, and Maddow's style is extremely fun and makes the book as a whole pleasant to read.

Highlights for me included the explanation of the entire Iran-Contra affair (I was, um, too young to be aware of it at the time, so I have always wondered what was going on) and the best (or at least most horrifying) chapter, a list of all the inadvertent and horrifying things that have happened with the US nuclear missile stockpile, including accidentally flying live nukes across the country in 2007. Oh, and dirty-bombing Spain and Greenland. It's a lot like Dr. Strangelove, actually, and I would happily read an entire book about Boneheaded Nuclear Program Decisions. But only if Rachel Maddow writes it.

Overall, well done, and I would definitely recommend it.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Rachel Maddow a little late because I live in France and I only learned about her on MSNBC with her stories that I follow about Drumpf&Co. Her book Drift about the change in US military policy is well-researched provides a lot of insight into how America modified executive power in declaring war from being necessarily approved by Congress to war by proxy using mercenaries. It does have a political event but as the cover says ultimately the logic underneath her argument is not partisan. Her writing displays lot of wit and is very readable. I had already forgotten about US intervention in Granada as well as Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal and Rachel explains these both (as well as Gulf War I&II, the Balkans the long-running occupation in the Middle East) in the overwhelming context of the drifting of decision making power for armed conflict into the hands of the President bypassing Congress and the Abrams act. Unfortunately, the trend did not improve under the last two Democratic Presidents, in fact it got worse. And worse yet, Drumpf's flag-waving and random use of weapons is even more terrifying. She also talks about the problems and dangers of maintaining the massive nuclear arsenal - something I have not yet heard about from Drumpf, Inc yet.
She does conclude with a list of things that can be done - again mostly bi-partisan, no-nonsense propositions. I would recommend this book for those who wish to understand how the armed forces have evolved and to see the scale of the problems this poses.

[Tom LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given that almost everyone on Goodreads loved this book, I'm genuinely wondering if the author succeeded at "sparking a debate". I haven't seen any. Have you?

So here is my lukewarm opinion. It's not a flat-out negative review, because I found the main points made in this book to be fair and thought-provoking, but Maddow's arrogant tone and her childish hate for Reagan ruined the book.

Let me start strong in being controversial here by quoting Justin Logan (Cato Institute) : "The chapters are stapled-together polemics about the foibles and screwups in American defense policy. They are decent polemics. They are not, unfortunately, a coherent explanation for why America has drifted away from small-R republicanism and toward empire, much less an explanation for how to turn the tide".

Having lived most of my life in Europe, I started reading this book having no idea of who Rachel Maddow was. Then I looked her up and realized she is a left-leaning tv pundit who comes across as intelligent and polished. I watched several of her shows and found them interesting. For TV, that is.

I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, and did not enjoy her tone much. I think it depends on where you're coming from: if you like Maddow and her tv show, you will love the book, because it's the same thing, same tone, same style (and nothing more, which is part the problem for me). If you are looking for something to spark a debate, for some provocative thoughts that inspire you to reason, argue, look for facts yourself, you will also probably like this book (but odds are, you are not looking for that). If you are looking for a book that helps you understand a complex topic without bias, and get closer to the Truth, then no - steer away - this is NOT the book for you, because Maddow's recollection of facts, although accurate, is done with a prosecutor's cherry-picking ability. In other words, she NEVER makes a concession, never gives the "on the other hand ... " argument. It's always just one very heavy hand:

“This is so obvious! I'm so incredulous! They must be so stupid!".

How can you treat incredibly complex issues like these with such superficiality?

And by the way, most of this book is a pretty nasty hit piece on Reagan. So, be warned.

But aside from the clear bias, the main reason why I did not like the book much is that I found it too “pop” and often off-topic. It reads just like one of Maddows' shows: snarky, fast, easily digested, her points brought home more often by jokes and anectodes rather than deep and serious analysis.

Almost as bad as "Jon Stewart politics": perfect to get easy applauses and encouraging laughter from fans, but fundamentally empty - what about trying to get to the objective bottom of a matter? Of course, you can never be too deep on TV, but in a book - especially one that talks about these topics - I was expecting more. There wasn't anthing more.

The book is also structured in a very unorganized way. I agree with one reviewer who writes: "The book lacks focus. While it is ostensibly about how the military has lost its way, the chapters switch back and forth on subject without a natural flow. At times throughout, I had to keep asking myself what point she was making [me too. Too many segments are not contextualized]. Her brief review of Operation Urgent Fury (Invasion of Grenada) is an interesting collection of stories and an inside look at Reagan's rationale, but it seemed more a record of a less-than-perfectly-executed military operation than a critique on any particular aspect of military leadership, particularly in the policy arena. Also, it seemed to serve as a way to chip away at Reagan, which she seems to harp on."

And how over-long and passionate is her attack on Reagan! Oh my God!! Almost 50% of the book. If you pretend you don't know anything about the man, you will come out of this book convinced that he was absolutely nothing more than a nasty, dishonest moron.

As one reviewer puts it: "By "drifting" so far into REAGAN-BASHING she looks sophomoric and detracts from the legitimate points she attempts to make... which are worthy ones about executive power, the constitution, and soldiers' lives".

Bias and truth are not mutually exclusive, but by presenting only one side of Ronald Reagan, she does a disservice to history and she deforms the truth, like entering a dark room, pointing the torchlight only to the worst corner of it, and giving a judgement to the whole room.

But then again, that's what the mainstream media do every minute of the day.

I also said I found it often off-topic because, as another reviewer said well: "Whether she's right or not that the USSR was a benign foreign power whose global ambition was over-hyped by Reagan (while making no mention of Soviet bloc oppression or the invasion of Afghanistan), deficit spending for the 80s military build-up was a flawed policy, and that Reagan was complicit in Iran-Contra -- these items have nothing to do with her central thesis about "Drift." It's interesting stuff at times, but if I was grading her paper I'd tell her to stick to the point."

With "Drift", Maddow decided to tackle an immensely complex series of topics (maybe too many) and her conclusions are unfortunately border-line naive and ultimately unconvincing.

Naive because, even though I'm very far from being a history expert, and I'm not even American, I got the impression that her thesis is driven by a mythical idea of the United States as it supposedly used to be: she wants to revive the old ideal of America as a "deliberately peaceable nation", not one "always on the lookout for war".

It sounds like a grand ideal - and how can you not wish it was true? - but *is it* actually true that the US was a much more peace-seeking nation back then? Or is this the typical "oh, the good old golden days" type of narrative?

Let's see: the United States' longest period without a war would appear to be the 33-year period between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the beginning of the Spanish-American War (1898). That's not that long, is it? Is it not naive to think that there is a real difference between a modern President declaring that peace is the highest ideal, and one of the first Presidents making the same declaration?

Wasn't America a nation interested in its imperial role, waging countless conflicts again Native Americans, Mexicans, and colonial powers as the new country stretched to encompass a continent? And more importantly, hasn't the world changed beyond recognition and haven't international relations become intertwined in such an unprecedented way that a comparison with a 200 years old foreign policy might be slightly misleading?

Maddow analyzes the balance of war-waging power between Executive and Congress. She explains how the US Constitution had intended to set up some safeguards against going to war too easily, namely the requirement of Congress approval, in the absence of which a President could only use military force for a maximum period of 60 days. Maddow argues that this requirement has been stretched and loosened by some Presidents to the point that today the Executive can do pretty much what it pleases when it comes to sending troops to war. I think that is a good point, and seeking a better balance in this highest-level relationship is a worthy cause.

As for the use (or non-use) of reserves: when LBJ decided to not call the reserves into the Vietnam war, in Maddow's opinion, he started a dangerous trend of separating the military from the civilian population. That is an ok point, that leads to the wider point that war should be transparent, visible, for everyone to see, for communities to feel the direct pain of, so that Presidents would have much more political capital at risk when committing to the use of force abroad.

But I'm really not that convinced about this argument. It sounds too simple. For example: President Eisenhower had seen WWII with his eyes and he was committed to do anything he could to avoid that level of horror and suffering. Therefore, when Foster Dulles proposed to use the CIA to execute covert military actions that would allow the US government to implement its foreign policy goals with an infintely smaller number of casualties (and costs) than in case of a war, Eisenhower found that a preferable option and gave his approval - multiple times. The point is, it is not as simple as Maddow makes it: in some cases, lack of transparency itself was intended by the President as a necessary tool to limit losses, be more efficient and reduce casualties, rather than only as a moronic sense of "I'll do whatever I damn please because I am the President", as she seems to imply. But listening to Prosecutor Maddow, it sounds like every President who mobilized troops was just a child with a big gun.

Proposals

Towards the end, Maddow offers some proposals aimed at improving the current situation:

"1- The saying “Freedom isn’t free” should be more than a bumper sticker, it should be fiscal policy. When we ship troops off to war, we should all pay for it.
2- Our Guard and Reserves should be the institutions that weave civilian and military life together. When we ship these men and women off to war, civilian communities all over America should feel that loss".

I don't know how realistic this is. Sounds like trying to discourage Presidents from making war, pretty much ... ever.

Here is another proposal:

"3- Do away with the secret military. If we are going to use drones, the Air Force should operate those drones and pull the trigger. If the CIA is going to do military missions, they need to be accountable like the military is. Same goes for policy makers. Special Forces can be unconstrained and clandestine to the bad guys but not to Congress."

I don't know much about this matter, but this book didn't do anything to help me better understand it, or to inform me on how secretive some special ops are - in general - in the eyes of Congress even if they are not supposed to be. Again, only a couple of anectodes.

Also: you sure you want to do away with secret drones when your competitors / opponents are China and Russia? Really?

And another proposal here:

"4- Wind back the privatization of war and the military’s dependence on contractors for what used to be military functions. And when private contractors on our payroll commit illegal acts, they should be prosecuted, not given more contracts."

While the author draws deserved attention to the relatively new phenomenon of using civilian contractors to do work previously done by military personnel, she seems to have much more concern with the fact that large companies make money at this enterprise rather than whether it is needed, effective, or what the legal ramifications are. Maddow focuses only on the particular scandal of the private contractors in the Balkans, but fails to make a full, 360 degrees, compelling argument. As always throughout this book, the Devil with the echoing "mwahahahaha" evil laughter is the one and only, Dick Cheney. She wants his head on a plate.

And another proposal:

"5- Shrink our existing nuclear infrastructure to fit our country’s realistic nuclear mission. Clearly define that mission and only expend what we need to do that."

A serious and realistic proposal. Maybe not easy to implement, but very important.

Core argument

As for Maddow's core argument, that America is sliding down a path of unapproved military conflicts, as I said above, I see her overall point, but I have troubles accepting that this is such a new or recent phenomenon. In fact, if you look at more than 200 military actions in US history, only 11 war declarations have been approved by Congress and 11 times Congress authorized the use of force.

Unsurprisingly, Maddow leaves these statistics out.

She also leaves out very important facts that a book like this should absolutely have included or at least mentioned:

1) Korean War, 1950-1953: Major undeclared war, by executive fiat. First war approved by the UN, a precedent for Clinton with Bosnia.

2) Dominican Republic invasion, April 1965 (to 1966). Another adventure by LBJ, simultaneous with his Vietnam escalation. Maddow devotes an entire chapter to the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, with 8,000 American soldiers and 19 of them killed, but nothing about the DR episode, with 42,000 US soldiers, 44 of them killed, and up to 10,000 Dominicans dead. Another executive war.

3) Somalia 1992-1993, where a humanitarian mission morphed into US forces taking sides in the civil war, until "Blackhawk Down" hastened US withdrawal.

Ok, I just realized I've just written a long essay, when I really meant to just share my personal experience of this book.

Here it is in a few words: "Drift" is a bit of a messy argument made by a prosecutor with no interest for objective truth who very often doesn't stick to the point. The main point is a very valuable one, about a balanced approach by the US government to armed conflict and foreign policy. However, do NOT read it if you are looking for an even-handed voice. Maddow sells her opinions (and she does it very well), cherry-picks facts, builds arguments on anectodes and jokes.

Entertaining but not deep, thought-provoking but not objective, well-written but not well-organized.

And since it's not easy to find reviewers with a similar take to mine, here's a review from the Cato institute: http://www.cato.org/publications/comm...

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unaware of Rachel Maddow until I saw several interviews of her for her current book “Blowout”. I was impressed to learn that she is a Rhodes Scholar and has a Ph.D. in Politics. I watched a few of her shows and read this book. I am amazed at her analytical abilities. She can reduce complicated data into succinct, epigrammatic, perceptive and easy understandable information.

Maddow documents how the checks and balances of government have broken down. She says Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to debate, approve or disapprove of wars. The military relies too heavily on contractors and the executive branch find it too easy to go to war. Maddow’s use of antidotes and humor makes the book an easy read. I wish the book was a bit more neutral or evenly balanced, but I guess that would not be making her point as attention grabbing. I noted she said that the failure of the government’s checks and balances has placed the country in a dangerous place. This book was written in 2013.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is seven hours and thirty-one minutes. Maddow narrated her own book.

[Jay Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

What ever your position on the FOX – MSNBC political polarity spectrum, I think you would have to agree that Rachel Maddow is the only political talk show host who doesn’t just phone it in and settle back to let the pointy heads yell at each other.

A thorough and intelligent framing of the upcoming subject precedes every one of her interviews or segments. Yes, her slant is liberal and her wit is broad, but at least, she bases her opinions on something of substance approximating reality. I think it is safe to say that she is the only political host with a Doctorate in Politics from Oxford.

As demonstrated by “Drift,” she is also a first class historian and essayist, too.

This is the book and these are the facts that should have outlined our national conversation, such as it was, about Iraq. As “drift” implies, the sorry state we find ourselves in – a muscle-bound, fearful and under-equipped economy – after spending trillions of our national treasure on questionable exploits was not a Republican or Democratic conspiracy. Rather, it is the 50-year result of a great people with self-correcting values, that simply took the easy way – drifted – by not hewing to those values.

In many ways, the upcoming Presidential Election is a distraction to the central question of our times: how do we get our groove back?

We could pursue that question in much worse fashion than by following Maddow’s approach in “Drift:” don’t start with blame; seek to understand the over-arching consequences; follow the money to understand decisions and decision-makers; tether your concept of the ideal future to our country’s core values; buying more of something clearly doesn’t mean better outcomes and get your head out of your butt!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book, by a liberal from a military family. Throughout, Maddow treats the military with the respect it is due, but calls out numerous politicians and power-players at the top (including many military commanders) who have misused military power and managed it badly -- with the result that American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines get the short end of the stick, and no appreciable societal benefit of the post-WWII style is provided. A book about a sad and infuriating phenomenon engendered by a bureaucracy of cynical political opportunists who don't give a damn about fighting men and women.

I gave it four stars instead of five because I feel she glossed over the GWB years slightly....probably wanting to avoid opening up that can of worms, since she's pretty much known for being their arch enemy.

My guess is that she felt her point had been made about those years and their misuse of military power. But it troubled me to not hit hard on these years, given the grotesque misappropriation of military resources, with great cost in American lives -- and the fact that, as far as I can tell, the underlying motive that caused all the privatization that so doomed the nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have been a hatred of the American system on the part of Cheney and Rumsfeld -- that is to say, a Friedman-influenced desire to "drown government in a bathtub." As in, the FEDERAL government. As in, THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. In any other country, that sentiment would be regarded as treason -- what other definition for "treason" does one need than the actual destruction of the American system? -- but in this country, its true believers were given free reign to form a government that got to send a bunch of Americans off to die for no earthly reason than to further their profit motives, and with no ultimate long-term geopolitical effect, I suspect, other than to essentially hand over influence in the Levant, Iraq, North Africa and possibly the Gulf to such far-more-enlightened motherfuckers as Shiite Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, radical Sunni fundamentalists, and (in business terms) China. "What's a Sunni? What's a Shiite?" Cheney has been said to have asked, probably sarcastically. Whether that's true or not, I think Maddow missed low-hanging fruit by not pointing out how fantastically ineffective the geopolitics of the GWB administration has been in furthering American dominance.

Whether or not Maddow or I are in favor of American dominance, the Bush administration bungled that move so badly that it achieved just the opposite. I believe that makes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the most disastrous American military operations of all time, by a huge margin.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an internationalist (though not a globalist) and a Democrat, albeit a far more liberal one than most other Democrats. I'm not a huge fan of unbridled American hegemony. I'm also a policy hawk -- I think an extremely strong American military, used properly, is the best bet the world has to see the influence of democracy, small d, increase over the next 100 years.

Unfortunately, under (to some extent) Clinton and (far more obviously) under Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, American hegemony was not furthered, but fumbled -- in a way that will result in far more destructive forces taking far more power. This isn't the wretched of the earth taking their rightful power. These are corrupt and dangerous fascists getting free reign to fuck up the developing world far more than the Western powers have managed to fuck it up already -- which is saying something.

By squandering American prestige, influence, and money, by managing the wars so badly that they were inevitably lost in the long run, by telling the rest of the world to go to hell, and showing widespread incompetence, the Bush administration managed to divvy that growing hegemony up between to Russia, China, India, to some extent Europe, and far less stable countries like Pakistan and Iran.

"Unmooring" indeed. Maddow should have addressed those events in this book more than she did.

For what it's worth, however, even if they're not extensive enough for my taste, her arguments that the Bush-era military privatization has been a complete disaster are spot-on. The long-term geopolitical strategic situation in the Gulf and Central and Southern Asia is not really what Maddow was addressing, so, hey, it's cool.

On every other level, I found this a great book. Maddow has a particular political bent; I'm not about to pretend she doesn't. It tends to be pretty close to my own political bent, as well. However, the difference between Maddow and conservative writers is that she backs her claims up with specific facts. I feel that she's done that here, quite effectively. And any objective reading of this book should leave anyone who loves America (or people in general) horrified at just how royally the U.S. military has been left at the mercy of business interest and of politicians who are ill-equipped to dictate political or military affairs.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Drift" is not what some might expect; this is no kumbya-ish "Peace Good, War Bad" diatribe. This book is far more nuanced than that. Maddow accepts that war is sometimes necessary. But, a variety of trends have eliminated or reduced the historic factors that have made war a difficult choice. We've now been at war for more than a decade and most of society hasn't been impacted at all. The exceptions, of course, are those in the military, guard, and reserves and their families, for whom she maintains an appropriately reverential and respectful regard. But, war should be a hard choice, and all of society should feel the pain.

Although Maddow doesn't pull punches in criticizing those who she believes acted inappropriately in contributing to these conditions (particularly Reagan; I had forgotten just how screwed-up the Iran-Contra affair was), the title of the book conveys the overall theme that this drift towards easy warfare was unintended. It was the consequences of various Presidents (Clinton and Obama are not by any means excluded)who have acted to overcome barriers to action that they believed to be necessary. She hardly touches at all upon the motives for the Iraq war, focusing instead on they systems and processes that made it possible.

Drift is informative, witty, and well-written. Although many will discount her work because of her strong political views, Maddow is a great talent, and I look forward to seeing more from her.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rather short book, around 250 pages, dealing with a very weighty subject which is: what it means for us to live in a permanent war state. While author Rachel Maddow is well-known as a liberal commentator, I thought that, in this book, she came across as a conservative in the true sense of the word, as wanting to go back to the intent of the framers of the Constitution. The Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war and one of Maddow's points is that Congress gave up its authority. Executive (presidential) power has expanded to weaken our system of checks on governmental powers. Another point is that we are now fighting wars that have gone on for decades now, as I write this,--but the American people don't feel it. It's only a tiny fraction of the population that bears the burden of fighting and paying the ultimate price. Another point is about how we've outsourced the war-making capabilities to private contractors. It was a way to save money--but it has turned out to be more expensive. And she points out the dangers of our aging nuclear stockpiles. Written in 2012, this book remains very relevant and, at some point, we will have to address the issues she raised in this book

[Monte Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, I don't think that there is a lot I can really talk about with any sort of insight. I will say that a lot of the book was illuminating, both from a "huh, never looked at it from that lens before" way and just a straight up, I had no idea this was going on, sort of way. So yeah, I enjoyed it. I very much look forward to this being my next thrift store hunt because I think that this will very much benefit from a reread with actual annotations. For now though, I had a good time. I think other people will have a good time with it. 12/10 definitely say pick it up.

Also, because this was a note I had on the last book by Maddow I read, I don't think that this one is as circuitous and the points made don't spiral in on themselves. It's much more of a linear line to follow with less side stories that leave the reader questioning how its meant to play into the larger context of the book.

[Maxine · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to author and political pundit, Rachel Maddow, Thomas Jefferson believed that the executive branch of the US government would always be tempted to take the country into war. To prevent this, the power to declare war was given to congress in the belief that, with so many people with different and conflicting agendas, it would be much harder to get such a declaration. Jefferson also believed that the burden of war, both the financial and human cost, must be shared by all, thus adding another strong deterrent.

However, in the last few decades all of this has changed - the US has been at war almost without cease since Reagan. Since then, a series of wars have been declared by each successive President regardless of political stripe, without Congress' approval or, in some cases, knowledge. At the same time, fewer citizens have taken part in the actual fighting while the rest stay at home. War, in effect, has become almost painless for the vast majority making waging war more attractive. There has also been a huge rise in the use of private contractors in war zones (sadly, who have few if any restraints on their behaviour) making war not only less painful but much more profitable for some.

Maddow's book gives us a well-documented, well-researched explanation of how this happened. She points out that this has been the result of policies of both parties, that presidents on both sides of the aisle have been willing to embrace this drift away from the Founding Fathers' original intent and that Congress, again on both sides of the aisle, have allowed this to happen with almost no objection.

There is also a chapter where Maddow lists all of the nuclear accidents which have occurred on American soil in this same time period, a list scarier than anything Stephen King has written.

Maddow makes her points about the unmooring of military power clearly, cogently, and with a great deal of wry humour. Most importantly, it is non-partisan and very accessible. If you read only one book on politics this year (or even if you have no plans to read any), you should really read this one - I can't think of a more important message that everyone needs to hear.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure, it's probably biased. Making a claim and deductively supporting it involves bias. Bias and truth are not mutually exclusive. And Maddow's claim, that the US executive branch has essentially subverted the Constitution and the ideas of the founding fathers in its evolution toward a secret, unaccountable military disconnected from the government and the public, is awfully damning. Although Drift is occasionally funny, the feeling it leaves with the reader is outrage.

Maddow slays some sacred cows in this book. You could argue that it's an extended hit piece on Reagan, but if Maddow's claims are to be believed he deserved impeachment and criminal prosecution for his unconstitutional forays into Nicaragua and the Middle East, essentially The Iran Contra Affair. On the other hand, she paints other conservatives such as Colin Powell and George H.W. Bush in a mostly favorable light and condemns liberals like Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama for continuing to exert military oversight that is not only not given to them by the Constitution but expressly, intentionally denied from them by the founding fathers. Unsurprisingly, the villain who lurks in the shadows throughout much of the book is former senator/former secretary of defense/former military contractor CEO/former vice president Dick Cheney. She even dedicates the book to him.

In fairness, I searched for decent rebuttals to her claims online. I mostly found ad hominem attacks on Maddow herself: she's a liberal, she's a lesbian, etc. Truthfully, she's also a former Rhodes scholar who holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford--hardly the liberal equivalent of a Beck or Limbaugh. One criticism correctly asserts that she seems to ignore everything that happened between 1776 and 1967, which is true enough but hardly worth discounting her entire claim.

Drift is definitely worth reading for some perspective on how we ended up in a country that wages long drawn-out wars which drain the budget while simultaneously complaining about spending money on comparatively less expensive social problems and waging secret CIA sponsored wars with remote controlled drones. You may not like the answers though.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Drift goes something like this: once upon a time, the founders of the United States revolted against the British military presence in America and the tax burden of paying for that military. Those same founders were so worried about the problems that come with a standing army that, in the Constitution, they explicitly included several checks and balances to keep the US a peaceable nation, and the military a band of citizen-soldiers. This went along fine until Vietnam, when the president began to experiment with sending troops to fight in a war that hadn’t been officially declared by Congress. Things began to deteriorate even more rapidly when Reagan, a showman who understood that one key way to keep his popularity level up was to identify an Enemy to fight, increased the defense budget by a staggering 20% per year and started several illegal military operations around the world. He pushed both spending on the military and executive power to extremes never before seen, and presidents since then have followed suit. At this point:

By 2011, the total federal R&D budget for alternative energy sources—derided by the right as a huge Obama-era boondoggle—was about $3 billion a year. Meanwhile, the defense R&D budget was $77 billion a year—derided by no one, ever. If you added up what every other country spent on its military in 2001, the US military budget was about half that total; by 2005, those two numbers were equal. In other words, the United States spent as much on national defense as every other country in the world combined. And the Pentagon can now spend those dollars in a way that insulates the decision makers from the political consequences of making life uncomfortable for the voting public.

Americans have never been so far away from the consequences of a war. Because the various pieces of the military machine that aren’t the army itself—the CIA, private contractors—are unregulated and unaccountable, and because the president no longer bothers to ask Congress for approval before military maneuvers, the average citizen doesn’t feel the effects of war as they used to, and that inertia drags us further into endless fighting. We’ve drifted away from the ideals enshrined in the Constitution, and it’s had enormous effect on our country.

Maddow’s overall point is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We’ve drifted so far away from our ideals not through some vast conspiracy, but through a thousand different decisions in the last fifty years. If we want to reverse this trend, it will take a massive effort, politically and socially, to do so. But it will be worth it, because:

Just the nuke budget in the last half of the twentieth century was more than federal spending on Medicare, education, social services, disaster relief, scientific research (of the non-nuclear stripe), environmental protection, food safety inspectors, highway maintenance, cops, prosecutors, judges, and prisons … combined. The only programs that got more taxpayer dollars were Social Security and non-nuclear defense spending.

(And FYI, most of those nukes are 40-50 years old, have wing fungus, and are badly in need of repairs—that no US scientist can perform, because the pieces that need updating are too sophisticated and complex. No joke.)

The military is a self-sustaining machine at this point. We have the most professional and highly armed military in the world, and the only way to make that profitable is to continue fighting wars. As Maddow says, we’ve created a military superstructure at the expense of all else: we can no longer afford to continue down this road. We’ve focused on the military at the expense of the economy, and it will require a radical shift for us to pull back on executive abuse of power and sending our entire budget into defense. What if we could take all that money and divert it towards education, social services, job training? Isn’t that the world that we want to live in?

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having trouble rating this one. Ultimately, I call it amazing because of Maddow's remarkable ability to clear away clutter from the last 40 years to look at one particular thread of history--the consolidation of military control in the hands of POTUS, and what that has done to us as a country.

It took me almost a month to read this (oops, overdue library fines), even though it's under 300 pages, because I had to keep putting it down. It HURT. I'm old enough to remember all of this. When I read about Jimmy Carter saying that the US priority should be cutting its oil consumption, I also remember a Buick commercial that had a guy standing in front of a big house and saying, I worked 25 years of my life for this, and now I'm supposed to buy a small car? I remember the indignation at Carter's suggestion that we somehow deprive ourselves, and I can't help but think we'd be in a better position now if we had done what was evident, yes, 40 years ago, that we should do.

I'm old enough to remember Reagan playing fast and loose with the truth, if he even knew what it was, calling that band of, come on, nun-raping cocaine smugglers, the contras, "Freedom fighters." The Panama Canal was ours; Granada was a Communist threat--and he got elected. Hell, he got RE elected. And Maddow does a great job of showing the actor, the guy who just had to know a few lines, never mind the substance, and his henchmen, Meese, et. al., consolidating the power to use the military at his will. And then we got the Gulf War, the Iraq war, Afghanistan.

The separation of the military and the making of war from every-day American life; the increasing out-sourcing, hence, obscuring, of components of the war machinery that ought to be visible to citizens of a democracy; the undermining of US image and substance through arbitrary use of force and the loosing on unsuspecting civilian populations of massive numbers of DynCorp and KBR "support" personnel who are not subject to military, or US, regulations and scrutiny--Maddow does a great job of tracing how this came to pass, why it's harmful, and how it could, and still can be, reversed. An important book, I'm glad I read it, and I'm filled with admiration. I can't imagine another writer who could use "whoopsie" effectively in the context of a bit of sloppiness in handling nuclear weaponry.

If you're under, say, forty, it's an excellent recent history text; if you're old enough to remember the last 30 years, well, owee--it'll confirm your worst--well, almost--suspicions of where some of our former presidents were taking us.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five nights a week, Rachel Maddow presents a well-researched show. The content is always good, but Maddow's depth, commitment and passion make it. Her forte is policy. In this book, she discusses how the US military has become "unmoored" from its Constitutional role.

She begins with the Constitution's framers and how they were in unanimous agreement, all of them, from Jefferson to Hamilton, that the power to make war cannot be made by one man. This kind of commitment needs discussion and agreement. Next, Maddow discusses the volunteer army and how it is a necessary component in the evolution of our current situation.

Then, she discusses the unconstitutional military actions of the Reagan administration, Grenada, Lebanon and Nicaragua and how they went, essentially, unpunished. From there, Maddow sees the Abrams Doctrine that requires call up of the National Guard a as a check on this power, since the manpower of the National Guard was a necessary component for mobilization. To get the resources of the "citizen soldiers" for Desert Storm, Pres. GWH Bush, needed and accordingly sought Congressional approval.

Since that time, presidents have seized initiatives and Congress gave them a pass. Internal policies of both the Pentagon and the CIA, policies that the public has had no input into or say about, have laid the foundations for greater executive branch control with little or no oversight. Private contractors, whose work is easily hidden can be used in lieu of armies. The CIA, whose official role is to gather information, now launches drones and sets kill targets. While a there has been a widely heralded withdrawal of "troops" from Iraq, thousands of contractors remain.

Through this discussion, Maddow shows how during the Cold War, the arms race was sold to the public through fear of Russia. Today's military buildup needs so such marketing effort. There are stories of nuclear accidents, an admitted 11 lost nuclear bombs all "back when" there was more oversight. Maddow concludes with a list of policies that can if not curtail, can hold back this evolution.

It's a short book, so not everything can be addressed. I would have liked a discussion on the re-purposing NATO after the cold war and 1950's/60's CIA operations (Bay of Pigs, removal of Allende in Chile, Mosaddegh in Iran, etc.) designed for regime change.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty much a pacifist, but as a good citizen I believe everyone needs to know something about the US military. Rachel Maddow's book takes you through -- step-by-step, war-by-war -- all of the decisions made since the end of the Vietnam War. The topics include the War Powers Act, the Abrams Doctrine, the volunteer Army and use of the Guard and Reserves, the invasion of Grenada, the Iran-Contra Affair, the Balkans involvement, Iraq War I, the use of private contractors, the Afghan War, Iraq War II, the use of the Intelligence services to direct drone bombing, and the deplorable state of our nuclear weapons. The consistent message is the growth of the Imperial Presidency aided and abetted by Dick Cheney. If you want to know why the Constitutional rule that "Congress declares war" has not been followed, this is your book.

Maddow reads like one of her TV monologues -- smart and witty. There is no denying she is a liberal, but she did a massive amount of research to produce this book.

Recommended for all US citizens.

[Paul Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel Maddow is a brilliant, insightful, and passionate public intellectual. There's a paucity of people like her in the US today, and Drift should be applauded.

Maddow doesn't really offer anything new here in terms of her political analysis. If you've been thinking critically about US history from the beginning of the Cold War to the present day, you won't find much new information in Drift.

But providing new information isn't Maddow's gist. Her impetus is to analyze well-known historical facts in an attempt to show, in foreign policy at least, the ways in which US history drifts toward the Right, no matter which corporate-sponsored, major-party president currently has his butt in the desk chair of the Oval Office. She carries through her analysis in an engaging, funny, and entertaining way. She's a great teacher.

Maddow's thesis is that the US has drifted toward the Right (she never comes out and uses the word "fascist," but she has every right to) because the Congress has begun to cede power to the President in the declaration and, when it comes to the President's corporate backers, the maintenance of war. In addition, she argues that the Abrams Act of the 1960s and the use of the draft made sure that the US people knew that there was a very real price of human lives (read: US deaths) in the waging of war.

Now, under Presidents Bush and Obama, war has become a state of life for the US people - something that we expect and don't really notice that much anymore. This is because in assuming dictatorial (fascist?) power in declaring and waging war, the President doesn't engage Congress (the people's body in any good old fashioned democracy) in conversation. He just goes ahead and does whatever he wants. And Congress is more than willing to play along, most likely because its members have the same corporate backers as the President.

"Leftist" supporters of President Obama should read this book to learn how, in terms of foreign policy at least, he's on the same page as his predecessor, the man they love to hate. I'm no supporter of either Bush or Obama, and I'm a died-in-the-wool pacifist, so please realize that you're reading the remarks of someone, like Maddow, who is willing to analyze objectively and critically the RECORDS of both men.

One final note. Maddow doesn't just complain about the US's drift to the Right. She actually proposes at the end of Drift solutions to the problem. Drift isn't an ironic book or a book that simply bitches about what's wrong with the way US Federal politicians treat the rest of the world and US citizens. Rather, it's an unabashed cry for reason and, dare I say, peace in our time.

Rachel Maddow should be applauded for her book and for being so gutsy and courageous. I wish that there were more US citizens like her.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vest the question of the war in the Legislature." -James Madison (124)

"We all have an interest in America having an outstanding military, but that aim is not helped by exempting the military from the competition for resources. With no check on its growth and no rival for its political influence, the super funded, super empowered national security state has become a leviathan....Overall, we're weaker for it, and at enormous cost. As the national security state has metastasized, decisions to use force have become painless and slick, almost automatic. The disincentives to war deliberately built into our American system of government- particularly the citizen soldier, and leaving the power to declare war with Congress instead of the President - we've worked around them. We ought to see that constitutional inheritance as a national treasure, yet we've divest ourselves of it without much of a debate." (248)

In Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, author Rachel Maddow presents a very informative summary of just how complicatedly unconstitutional the dynamic surrounding how the USA looks at war and its armed forces have become since its inception. The vital questions Maddow asks here should be asked of every American, and just what cost the country is willing to make regarding those very uncomfortable inquiries. There's much to unpack with this book.

The environment of a post World War II landscape allowed the United States to gain status as the world's leading superpower, and with it, the difficulties and hubris that quite frequently become attributed to having such power. Maddow's argument encompasses that over the last half century and all of the 21st century so far, the United States military function has become marred by an ever-engorging Executive branch bent on greater power with regards to declaring war and conflict, misappropriation of armed forces to solve various world problems, privatization of war that demoralises American citizens understanding of conflicts, an ageing and dangerous nuclear arsenal, and the reeducation of what war exactly means to a society that has mostly grown numb and sadly bored by the recent wars in the Middle East.

While all that may seem too broad a topic for a short book like this, Maddow examples are well told, and largely alarming. President Reagan's ego and poor management of Grenada and Iran-Contra, or the privatisation by companies such as DynaCorp and their gross human rights abuses, for example, are well written and completely unsettling that the United States was tied to such events. Putting aside her well known politically liberal persona, Drift is the kind of book any American from any political affiliation should read, analyse and expand into their own understanding of America's relation to its military force. It isn't so much "anti-war" as it is "anti-mismanagement." Something that threatens the U.S. from within. A top contemporary political book to read.

[Tony Heyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did something bad. I judged the book by its cover.

Well, really, I judged it by its title. When I first heard about Drift, I thought it was a great idea. Rachel Maddow is one of the very few political talkers that I can listen to because of her calm, well reasoned arguments. The premise of the book, at least as far as I understood it, was to talk about how America became ok with a constant state of war and how war could go on with little opposition. It is an important topic worthy of discussion and debate and hopefully action.

However, while the writing is fine, the book leaves much to be desired. Maddow focuses almost entirely on how Presidents from LBJ on made the military less accountable to Congress and to the general public. These are important issues, but it ends up being more of a history lesson than an analysis. Yes, Vietnam was conducted poorly by Johnson and Nixon. Yes, Reagan had many problems, most notably Grenada and Iran/Contra. And Yes, the use of contractors under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama make our war efforts far less accountable to the public. These are important things to discuss, but Maddow just leaves it there, putting the onus for this drift towards permanent war solely on the political process.

Maddow doesn't talk about the role of the media. She doesn't talk about how movies, television and video games glamorize war. She doesn't talk about the military industrial complex and how politicians protect military spending to advance their own political interests. She doesn't talk about money in politics and the lobbying of defense contractors. She doesn't talk about how the language of war has changed. And she doesn't talk about how the global geo-political picture has altered the public's perception of what war should be and when aggression is needed.

This could have been a great book with lots of interesting discussion. Instead it was an ok account of how recent Presidents have altered the role of the Commander in Chief. That wasn't enough for me to be happy with it.

[David Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main idea of this book, is that in recent decades it has become too easy for America to go to war. America's recent presidents have been gradually setting precedents for taking the country to war. Congress has been far too slack in checking this power in the hands of one person. Too often, Congress has not had a healthy debate on the wisdom of going to war. Sometimes presidents have simply acted covertly; Reagan comes to mind with the Iran/Contra affair and the attack on Grenada. At other times, Congress simply shirked their duty to debate the issues, and allowed a president to trample over their duty. After all, the U.S. Constitution states that the power to declare war lies with Congress. The framers of the Constitution knew full well that Congress is a slow, deliberative body that has plenty of opinions on any issue.

War has been easier for America to wage in recent years, because it has not been a burden on the populace. War is costly, but recent presidents have waged wars while reducing taxes. This puts the burden of the increased national debt on future generations. Also, the increase in private corporations doing many of the jobs that soldiers used to do has removed the necessity of a draft. Technology improvements, like drones, have further removed warfighting from our line of sight.

In the last chapter, Maddow lists a set of common-sense recommendations that should reduce the possibility of waging unwise, unpopular wars. Among the recommendations are: 1) Make war painful for the entire country, 2) Remove the secret military, 3) Quit asking the military to make political judgments, 4) allow the National Guard and Reserves to mostly be reserves at home, 5) end the privatization of war.

I thoroughly appreciated the arguments that Maddow makes throughout the book. My only complaint is with her writing style; it's full of slang, half-sentences, and glib; she writes exactly like she would speak in an informal conversation, and comes out in a condescending tone. I believe that Maddow could make her excellent points in a better way.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel brings us a clear, well-documented account of how our military has expanded and changed since WWII. She takes us from the entry into Vietnam, through Johnson's and Reagan's presidencies, and on through to Iraq, Pakistan, and beyond. She shows us how each step was taken that led to where we are now. And where are we?

A president can wage war now without bothering the rest of us. Fewer than 1% of US citizens are in the military, and as a rule we tend not to care about modern-day mercenaries: the employees of Brown, Kellogg, & Root, Halliburton, and Blackwater by whatever its current name is. At this time the private companies are putting more boots on the ground than is the US military. Because of sloppy or nonexistent oversight, these companies are costing us far more than just the cost overruns: they have wiped out our image in many companies, where they behave as ungovernable bullies - and in fact they are.

The privatization of war has consequences beyond even this, however. We can spend our way into and out of wars and keep going on about our business. We see no difference in our day to day lives. We don't pay for these wars in sacrifice or any other way. And therefore we have become numb to what they really are.

Years ago I remember reading an economics textbook. I remember little of it, but I remember this point: you can't have a successful economy manufacturing destruction. You have to build, not destroy. It is hard for any of us "regular folks" to comprehend the deficit we've created by waging these wars, and even harder to comprehend that payment will have to be made. In fact, it appears that collection has started. Our economy has been in the tank for a while now. It isn't just because of inflated housing.

I don't read many "political" books. I'm not a political junkie, although like many I hold strong views. This may be why I personally like Rachel so much. She does the work! And she explains it really really well. She rarely gets it wrong because she's passionate about facts. I came away from this book understanding how our constitution got to be irrelevant, how our standing army gradually and then exponentially increased, how we started farming out the work, even how we built up our nuclear arsenal, and even after the end of the cold war how we keep building it.

At the end Rachel offers us a checklist of what we need to do to get back on track. I believe that every member of congress and the president and his advisers all need to read this book and pay attention. I think it's possible that many of them are so caught up in day to day politics that they have lost the thread. It's here, it's clear, and we all need to pay attention.

I can't leave it there. Rachel brings to this tale all of her usual wit, which helps when we try to swallow.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to be a bit contrarian and down-rate this book. (Ideally, I'd put it at 3.5 stars, maybe 3.75.)

It's good, good indeed for what it covers. But, it operates under the presumption this is all new.

And, it's not.

Some US presidents tolerated quasi-official filibustering in Central America back in the 1850s.

Of course, that wasn't much.

But, since the Spanish-American War, but long before Vietnam, we had plenty of other undeclared wars, without act of Congress.

The 1899-1902 war in the Philippines against people who stupidly believed we wanted them to be free from Spain.

Wilson's 1914 invasion of Veracruz, then the Pancho Villa expedition. Then his undeclared intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Wilson and almost every president after him through LBJ had undeclared invasions somewhere in the Caribbean.


FDR had his undeclared destroyer-vs-submarine war with Germany.

Let's not forget the coups in Iran, Guatemala, etc.

And, if they were/are "sovereign nations," then every military action against an American Indian tribe without declaration of war fits the bill.

Yes, it's worse now than ever, seemingly.

But ... is it? There's food for thought the other way.

Let's say it is worse now. Maybe it's not that much worse, just we're more aware of it.

===

If it is worse, though ... Maddow could have spent more time looking at drones, and other modern issues that may only get worse in the future. Or, cyberwarfare, which we're doing right now with things like Stuxnet. Do the drones and viruses make unilateral executive department action even more tempting?

===

Maddow could further address why Congress doesn't want to be involved in many such cases. And, what was Congress like when McKinley poured tens of thousands of troops into the Philippines? Or during our worst Caribbean adventures?

So, the book isn't bad. It could be better on looking at future concerns, though. And, it could be better on looking at the lengthiness of our past history.

[David Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maddow's "Drift" was discussed briefly during an international relations lesson here at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth.  I felt the need to pick it up and see what she had to say.

Bottom line: she makes--and attempts to defend--an argument that America has drifted into a costly habit of perennial war. To back this up, the book's nine chapters analyze the nation's military commitments over the past 80 years and ties it back to the orignal intent expressed by the Founding Fathers.

A few quick thoughts--first, she does address the fact that Congress has never effectively asserted itself to stop a president with a "bead on war." Bush, Clinton, Bush--all saw a bit of resistance but ultimately got what they wanted.  Second, she does a great job at generalizing the scope of Private Military Companies (PMC) engaged in defense support and how that links to "doing more with less." Finally, her argument illustrates the road America took to 2001 and how the nation established precedent for a president to wage war, create a massive defense budget that was well over half the size of all other military budgets in the world combined, obviated the Abrams Doctrine that made reserve component forces relevant, and generally freed the Executive Branch of any restraints.

At the end of the day, she does posit that it's not too late and she offers eight recommdations to set a new course. The recommendations are broad and likely attainable.

My only complaint about the book is her method of referencing sources. Footnotes or endnotes are now where to be found, leaving the reader with a hint of "where did that fact come from?" syndrome. There is a nine-page "Notes on Sources" section at the end that attempts to quickly summarize her fact-finding-and-annotating process. It's weak, at best.

[Christopher Gerrib · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently finished reading this book. The author is famous as a TV-talker, but she is a Rhodes Scholar and has a PhD in politics, so she's no airhead. Despite her academic credentials, the book is written in a casual, conversational tone. It's a great read, and I highly recommend it.

The book's basic argument is that it has become entirely too easy for the United States to go to war. This is due to a couple of factors. First, the US military is large, at least by historical levels, and considered a professional organization. It's a lot easier to send volunteers to war as opposed to draft people off of the street. Second, due to various changes in our logistical structure (mostly contractors) we can fight a war with limited use of reserves. It's a lot more expensive to use a contractor in lieu of a reservist, but politically expedient. Third, Congress has largely stepped away from its historical role of declaring war.

Maddow points out that Presidents, Democratic and Republican, have been cultivating this ability to fight without Congress's say-so, and that Congresses, Democratic and Republican, have been stepping away from their oversight role. She also reminds Americans that the Founding Fathers were very scared of an Executive with unlimited war-fighting capabilities. They had seen first-hand how that power led to political abuse.

Where Maddow falls down a bit is in coming up with a solution. I think this is because the solution is both easy and hard - easy to say, hard to do. If you want to loose weight, you must eat less and exercise more. That's easy to say and hard to do. If you want to increase the Congressional oversight of wars, then Congress must take responsibility and action. Easy to say, hard to do.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published 5 years ago but relevant as all hell to today. My favorite quote (among many) from it:

"America's structural disinclination toward war [by its Constitution requiring the President to obtain the approval of Congress before declaring war] is not a sign that something's wrong. It's not a bug in the system. It is the system. It's the way the founders set us up--to ensure our continuing national health. Every Congress is meddlesome, disinclined toward war, and obstructive of a President's desire for it--on purpose...Against a president who [seems] bent on war, Congress [needs] to vigorously (and sometimes preemptively) assert its own authority...[Unfortunately, starting especially with President Reagan, t]he ropes [the founders installed in the Constitution] to lash down presidential war-making capacity, bindings that by design made it hard for an American president to use military force without the nation's full and considered buy-in, have been hacked at with very little appreciation about why they were put there in the first place...It wasn't supposed to be like this."

As a Trump supporter told me when I told them I was worried about this man having the means to declare war, "Oh, would you stop worrying so much! He can't declare war without Congress' approval." Uhm, not even considering all the hawks in Congress in the first place, the way the Executive branch's powers have grown since the days of Reagan? How could anybody not be worried?

Anyway, an excellent book.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any book that points out that Jeff Sessions is an idiot and manages to use the word chickenshittery multiple times is off to a good start, but Drift goes the extra mile and provides an interesting and well-researched study of military bloat and the U.S.'s relative comfort with a near-perpetual state of war.

After a quick examination of the country's initial view of the importance of making the population feel the costs of war across the board, Maddow launches into a really fascinating (if chilling) look at how the military industrial complex has become an end unto itself and how, as a country, we don't seem to much care (in large part, she posits, because such a small fraction of our country actually has their day-to-day lives interrupted or disrupted by wars).

I am sure she could tack on another chapter or two dealing with the current drone secrecy policy and/or the horror at the thought of sequester actually causing a cut in the military budget. This book felt so timely and, for me, was a real education. You could really hear Maddow's wonky, but hilarious, voice on every page.