Since the end of the George W. Bush presidency, the United States has come to rely on remote warfare to exercise power over sites of military intervention. Arguing that this marks an imperial turn, Rubrick Biegon analyzes why this approach has become central to American statecraft and what its persistence reveals about US foreign policy.

Across the grand strategic imaginaries of the post-9/11 presidencies, Biegon conceptualizes remote warfare as a toolkit of coercion whose instruments range from drones, private contractors, and special forces to security assistance and cooperation programs. Tracing its evolution from the Bush administration’s counterterrorism campaigns through its deployment under Joe Biden and Donald Trump, he shows how remote warfare adapted as Washington’s concerns shifted toward interstate competition. What became known as the light-footprint approach proved flexible, anchoring an era of forever wars in key hotspots across the Global South. Biegon argues that remote warfare enables US military intervention without active legitimation by leaders and other actors, sustaining the liberal capitalist order and US dominance through the projection of power.

A critical book for our bellicose times, Remote Warfare and US Grand Strategy shows how the embrace of remote warfare has breathed new life into American imperial ambition.