BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Another BuzzFlash recent classic offered at a special reduced price, including free shipping: "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" (The American Empire Project) (Paperback), by Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky is often margianlized by the mainstream media as "too left," and you won't see him on many "talking head pseudo-pundit" shows. He's too intelligent, uncompromising, outspoken and non-commercial for that crowd.

You may not agree with everything Chomsky has to say, but you'll have the thrill of a good intellectual discussion in a Cambridge coffee house. He'll get you thinking alright, and must of what he has to say is spot on, even if sometimes, he's a bit absolutist and, at times, a tad intellectually self-righteous.

We'll forgive him that. He's brilliant.

[Two reviews of the book follow.]

In this highly readable, heavily footnoted critique of American foreign policy from the late 1950s to the present, Chomsky (whose 9-11 was a bestseller last year) argues that current U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are not a specific response to September 11, but simply the continuation of a consistent half-century of foreign policy-an "imperial grand strategy"-in which the United States has attempted to "maintain its hegemony through the threat or use of military force." Such an analysis is bound to be met with skepticism or antagonism in post-September 11 America, but Chomsky builds his arguments carefully, substantiates claims with appropriate documentation and answers expected counterclaims.

Chomsky is also deeply critical of inconsistency in making the charge of "terrorism." Using the official U.S. legal code definition of terrorism, he argues that it is an exact description of U.S. foreign policy (especially regarding Cuba, Central America, Vietnam and much of the Middle East), although the term is rarely used in this way in the U.S. media, he notes, even when the World Court in 1986 condemned Washington for "unlawful use of force" ("international terrorism, in lay terms" Chomsky argues) in Nicaragua. Claiming that the U.S. is a rogue nation in its foreign policies and its "contempt for international law," Chomsky brings together many themes he has mined in the past, making this cogent and provocative book an important addition to an ongoing public discussion about U.S. policy.

-- Publisher's Weekly


Intellectual activist Chomsky takes aim at the Bush administration's policy of preemptive force against terrorism and sees it as part of a U.S. bent toward hegemony. Citing examples of similarly aggressive policies from previous administrations, Chomsky posits that the U.S. has been heading in this direction for generations. As the world's lone superpower and with the justification of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. has accelerated the troubling trend, with disastrous implications for foreign and domestic policy.

Drawing parallels with nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky examines the current U.S. world posture and growing willingness to act unilaterally. The country's sense of its role in world history and its noble ideals--not to mention its military might--have given rise to the notion that its motives and actions are not to be questioned at home or abroad. Chomsky offers a cautionary look at where we may be headed as a nation and the growing threats to world peace and personal freedom.

-- Booklist


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