[The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies. by Auron Macintyre, Regnery 2024; 173 pp.]

A reported plan by the Trump administration to continue military aid to Ukraine, combined with demanding a 5 percent increase in NATO member states’ defense spending, is a stark example of the contradictions and inconsistencies that plague both the US foreign policy establishment and the Trump presidency.

“Nobody could hate war more than I do.”—J. P. Morgan, Senate Munitions Committee