Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

[Dissident Heart]

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam ChomskyFor more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing -- as in the Cuban missile crisis -- to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and livable Earth. In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species.With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky dissects America's quest for global supremacy, tracking the US government's aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve "full spectrum dominance" at any cost. He vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control -- from unilateralism and the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism and the militarization of space -- cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our survival. In our era he argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland.Lucid, rigorous, and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival is Chomsky's most urgent and sweeping work in years. Certain to spark widespread debate, it is a definitive statement from one of the world's most influential political thinkers. www.americanempireproject...0805074007Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political works, from American Power and the New Mandarins in the 1960s to 9-11 in 2001. A professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, he is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

[Medway53]

Let me recommend Ch3 "The End of a Dream" of Barbara Tuchman's book 'The Proud Tower' for a picture of the turning point in American politics when the dream of an America that spurned Imperial ambitions ended. The influence of A.T. Mahan and his article "Hawaii and our Future Sea Power" esentially changed the outlook of the US government towards an expansionist, geo-strategic imperialism , seen as a further "Manifest Destiny" leads to the annexation of Hawaii and the 'liberation' of the Phillipines from Spain. Cuba, also in the mcKinley administration's sights, is left independent in name only.read on...