Hegemony or Survival : America's Quest for Full Spectrum Dominance [The American Empire Project ]

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Summary: well written global Amercian empire theory
Review: The basic theory of HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL is found in its subtitle that the United States has and has had (back to at least JFK and perhaps the end of WW II) a goal of America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project). Noam Chomsky uses specific examples from the past four decades to defend his argument that owning the world and militarily space have been the real objectives of American foreign and domestic policy. Chomsky also parallels the American global empire building to that of the eighteenth and nineteenth century British Empire where the sun never set until 1942 in North Africa. He insists the current administration is willing to risk human survival to prove they are right. He succinctly and intelligently supports his thesis by tracking the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of attaining "full spectrum dominance" at any cost.

This tome is extremely well written and worth reading as the historical based logic is quite easy to follow and seems so valid that the spin is the USA is the freedom providers and anyone opposing America is a vicious totalitarian. Chomsky's belief that a global empire must fail like the British did, but in this NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical WMDs) age will lead to an orb- wasteland is not as reliable of a conclusion as its defense seems more of a supposition. Still this is an eye opener that will receive praise from the left, condemnation from the right, sadly ignored from the middle, and never reach the global unaligned masses more interested in surviving leaders who know what is best for everyone.

Harriet Klausner

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Summary: important information
Review: This book presents us with important information to show us that our government's behavior these days is not just coming out of nowhere. Chomsky does a good job of connecting the dots between past events and current events so that we can better understand the world and how it works.

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Summary: response to another reviewer
Review: This is another winner from long-time foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky. His unswerving honesty and scrupulous documentation of sources continues to justify his analysis and its scholarly value. However, I am not writing this review to talk about another enjoyable Chomsky book; I'm writing to respond to the lack of intellectual honesty in the reviewer at the top of the list.

To respond to the questions raised by the member called 'A reader' in the review entitled 'Not for the open-minded':

1. Almost all foreign policy historians will refer to the United States as a hegemon. This is well established in academia and Chomsky does not have the responsibility of answering the question for you. Before you go and embarrass yourself, try reading a standard textbook in diplomatic history, such as American Foreign Relations by Thomas Paterson, et al.

2. Chomsky has never advocated isolationism; he has spoken out against interference, not engagement. There is a huge difference between trading with a nation as an equal and exploiting it through neo-liberal policies designed to reinforce the status quo and prevent development in the Third World. Think for a second about how the United States developed as an industrial power: through high tariffs, not 'free trade'. By refusing to allow other nations to develop self-sufficiency and local industry and agriculture, we keep them in a state of perpetual enslavement to American corporate interests. Again, this is not a 'liberal screed', it is modern economic theory, right out of the Wall Street Journal.

3. What does being an anarcho-syndicalist have to do with 'hating' America? Why do so many establishment 'conservatives' assume that disagreeing with the structure of government implies hatred for the nation as a whole? Think about this for a second: if you're not allowed to disagree with the structure of government, you're living in a police state. A flourishing democratic tradition allows for the expression of all political views; you either accept that freedom or not. Issuing an illogical ad hominem attack on Chomsky's American citizenship on the basis of his political views runs contrary to every principle this nation was founded on, not to mention the fact that it debases what it means to be a true conservative. Democracy is about dissent, not lock-step conformity; active civic engagement like Chomsky's is evidence of true love for a country (one that he has frequently praised for its freedoms, incidentally).

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Summary: Way too good and necessary
Review: This is my first book by Dr. Chomsky, and boy was I impressed with it. The first few pages are tough reads if you aren't use to being challenged to think, but I got use to it. I was actually able to read the whole book and I really enjoyed it.

Chomsky goes over how for the last 50 years; America has gone into other countries for its own selfish interests. Americans were/are either brainwashed by history textbooks or simply didn't/don't care because of video games and TV to notice any of this stuff. After reading this book, you won't look at the "news" as anything but a bunch of ignorant nonsense that is promoting one untrue way of thinking. Chomsky has gone to India, Turkey, Cuba, Israel - almost all of the countries he talks about and he has seen first hand what goes on in this countries. He also collaborates with various people in different countries to swap news clippings. What I'm trying to say is - if you want to know what is going on, you don't have to go to 100 different sources, Dr. Chomsky has done all of the homework and it is right here. Also - believe it or not, Chomsky was able to weave in some funny parts so you get some good laughs.

Here are some parts I highlighted from the book which I thought were really good:

On the war on drugs: The current things we are doing are not working, prevention and treatment are much more effective. Why don't we spend our money on this? Also land that we poison in Colombia (so drugs won't be able to grow) to "save ourselves" from drugs causes children to die or suffer from sickness and injury.

After pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts in the Iran-contra affair, Abrams received a Christmas Eve pardon from President Bush I in 1992, and was appointed by Bush II to lead the National Security Council's office for Near East and North African affairs -the senior director job that oversees Arab-Israeli relations and U.S. efforts to promote peace in the troubled region. (Hmm, I wonder why we can't seem to fix anything over there...)

Saddam did have weapons - but we gave them to him! And when he gassed the Kurds in the 80s (a monstrous thing indeed) we supported him.

I just can't go over everything but hopefully you understand what I am saying. Please remember, when he criticizes this country or any other one, he is criticizing the government, not the people. Also, we can't blame everything on Bush. We, the American people did not and are not doing enough to stop the Iraqi war. So do whatever you can because our tax dollars are being used to kill innocent people. When someone pointed this out to me (this simple fact that most Americans are oblivious to), I had trouble sleeping at night. So remember, if you think this war is worth fighting, please go fight it or send your children. If this war is not important enough for your children to die for, it is not important enough for anyone's children to die - even if they are a different color or religion then you.

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Summary: Erudite Review Of Current U.S. Foreign Policy
Review: This latest book by the prolific MIT dissident will no doubt be familar territory for those individual who have read previous books by Chomsky and keep up with his steady stream of recent interviews and speechs. The most positive aspect of Hegemony Or Survival is that the author is now reaching a larger audience than ever before.

The underlying thesis of this book is made clear by its title. The United States is a rapacious global empire which threatens human survival, especially with regard to the Bush administration's nuclear weapons and militarization of space policies. The U.S. is an inheritor of the legacies of the former European empires. The title of the book does not pose a question, but rather is a rather a statement which the reader either believes or disbelieves on the basis of the case the author makes. The power of the U.S. government and U.S. based multinationals is not only rapacious, but unpredecented in world history. Never before has a global power dominated the entire planet the way the U.S. has since the end of World War II, especially after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and whatever deterent effect it had U.S. global hegemony. Chomsky glumly open his book by citing biologist Ernst Mayr. Mayr considers the posibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe to be quite low and notes that the average life span of a species has been about 100,000, or the amount of time the human species has existed.

One is likely to learn of the history of imperialism they didn't know about before they heard or read Chomsky. How many people learn in school of the deliberate descruction of the Iroquois nation during the early years of the U.S. nation? Or of the annexation of Iroquois land and the "compensation" the Iroquois nation was forced to pay their conquerors after they were militarily defeated? Chomsky points out that this kind of behaviour by the U.S. in its early history is part of a long history of imperial powers passing on the costs of invasion and occupation to the victims of military agression: "Half a century before France's punishment of Haiti for its successful defiance, George Washington set forth in 1779 on the conquest of the advanced Iroquois civilization. His goal was to 'extirpate them from the Country,' he wrote to Lafayette on the Fourth of July, and to expand American boundaries westward toward the Mississippi; conquest of Canada was barred by British force. The 'Town Destroyer,' as Washington was known to the indigenous populatio, completed his mission sucessfully. The Iroquois were then informed that they would have to provide compensation for their trecherous resistance to their liberators. Another Clinton, then governor of New York, informed the defeated tribes that 'considering our Losses, the Debts we have incurred, and our former Friendship, it is reasonable that You make to Us a Cession of you Lands as will aid Us in repairing and discharging the same.' Having little choice, the Iroquois ceded their territory, only to discover that New York State proceeded at one to violate its solemn treaties and the prohibition of the Articles of Confederation and to take most of the rest through threats, deception, and guile. A young American solider later wrote home that 'I really feel guilty as I applied the torch to huts that were Homes of Content until we ravagers came spreading desolation everywhere,' but perhaps in a good cause: 'Our mission here is ostensibly to destroy but may it not transpire that we pillagers are carelessly sowing the seeds of Empire?'"

There is one startly ommisssion from Chomsky's overview of current developments in U.S. foreign policy. That would be the lack of any mention of the failed U.S. backed coup against the democratically elected governmnet of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela roughly a year before the invasion of Iraq. It would have made this book a more refreshing read if the author had provided a thorough review of the situation in Venezuala, rather than rehashing what he has been saying regarding Cuba and Nigaragua for decades. The thwarting of the 2002 coup in Venezuala was a hopeful developement that could be a foreshadowing of things to come. Just the fact that a U.S. backed coup in Latin America did not suceed like it would have back in the '60s and '70s is wonderful development in and of itself for the people's of the global South.

Hegemony Or Survival is not just about forecasting the potential doom of human species. It is also about the hopeful prospects represented by the unprecedented global demonstrations against invasion of Iraq before it even happened, including within the United States. While it took years for any visible opposition to the U.S. led invasion of South Vietnam, and eventual attack on all of Indochina, to take root in the '60s, today large demonstrations can be mobilized before a large military action can even take place. It is this "Second Superpower," the superpower of global public opinion against U.S. hegemony, Chomsky places hope in for the future of humanity and the planet.

This latest published work by Chomsky will no doubt earn the further emnity and jeering from defenders of the Empire, who have made Chomsky bashing into a favorite past among the most ardent exponents of the Empire, which is fine. I just wish they would come up with arguments against his arguments. Hegemony Or Survival contains twenty-seven pages of footnotes using radical fringe sources such as the Financial Times, Forreign Affairs and the New York Times. If there is one thing Chomsky excells at better than anything else, it is using the words of people in power against them. Discerning and discovering what leaders are also not telling us is Chomky's forte and he has done once again in Hegemony or Survival.

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Summary: Excellent book.
Review: Well researched, well written, and points to the obvious. Surprised to see so many positive reviews. Although it couldn't have gone without a few ranting "I hate dem collegeprofessormen people" types.

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Summary: There are two completely different United States...
Review: Well, this book practically says that there are two United States: one that existed until the end of World War II, a fair country, with a pride people who valued work, intelligence, freedom, innovation and free enterprise, and led a by a government that, basically, had a good eye for the welfare of its people and its institutions, and minded its own business.

Then was born the second United States: a paranoid one, controlled by its corporations and unlimited greed, fueled by the Cold War, capable of murdering a President (Kennedy), bombing foreign countries at will, killing foreign leaders, always finding new enemies to fight (first the Russians, now terrorism), forgetting all about social welfare, opting for the so-called "neoliberalism" and total free market. An United States that does not agree with reducing pollution and is capable of lying about the reasons to go to war to Iraq.

The world is not perfect, and it will never be. Maybe any country that reachs a military, economical and cultural leadership will act in mean way, I don't know (Rome, England, etc). But the fact is that, today, the the US is making foul play all around the world, and gathering some previously unknown hatred against him.

That's all this book tries to show, even if you like or not Noam Chomsky.

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Summary: More American than your beloved media
Review: You don't have to agree with everything Chomsky writes to find value in his work and his arguments. Before you accept any label that's been pinned on him, give his work a chance. His biggest crime just might be paying attention to facts, and questioning the praise we pour on ourselves, and actually caring about things like morality, and hypocrisy, and people.

Chomsky is the antithesis of the kind of intellectual and pundit that corporate media prefers, and he directs much criticism toward this 'establishment'; indeed, he has compared intellectuals and elite opinion-makers to the commisars of Soviet Russia.

This book is a sort of summation of material he has covered extensively before and since in different formats. The book proposes some important questions and considerations about this point in history. America finds itself in a state of unparalleled power in history. How do we use it? What is the cost of the quest for global dominance? The stakes are higher than ever. Terrorism, WMD, nuclear capability--these are things that threaten our existence. Are our current leaders really concerned with ending terrorism? Were they ever? What does the doctine of pre-emptive action mean, especially as applied to Iraq? And how long will people buy the same old stories that don't hold up under scrutiny? Who stands to really gain from global hegemony?

Chomsky reviews recent events like 9/11, world reaction, the National Security Strategy of 2002, announcing a doctrine of pre-emption, and, of course, Iraq, which is being played out as an outstanding example of hypocrisy and blind embrace of power. Once again, he goes through some useful facts about Iraq and America, namely that Saddam was a US client who had to be punished when he stopped following US orders. But of course, we now care so much about the Iraqi people, you know, we liberated them. And we cared so much about them when we supported Saddamn's reign by wrecking the country with sanctions. It's such a sham, you wonder how Bush himself can not crack up when he defends the 'reasons' for the war (WMD, democracy, etc, etc), or how he and most politicians can hide their utter contempt for the man on the street, or for anyone who actually looks at reality.

What is now clear in Chomsky's work is a very self-reflexive element, because Chomsky realizes how his work is viewed through the traditional doctrinal filters. Therefore, much of it seems like very, very bone dry humor, as he exposes the BS of politicians, elites, and ultimately ourselves. We're spreading democracy in Iraq...but are we really spreading democracy? Do we realy care about democracy, or the rights of all people, or freedom for everyone? Running through one case after another, the answer is quite different.

There's a very good reason Chomsky is often dismissed, or simply despised. His work concerns elementary moral questions, intellectual honesty, and general concern for PEOPLE, not institutions, or even states. He's anything but anti-American, if anything, he's very American. He cherishes freedom, and he routinely states that many of our American freedoms are unique and unprecedented. He reminds us that in a democracy, in a real democracy, you don't 'rally to the leader', you don't blindly worship the state. If we believe in freedom, real freedom, then we question power structures and their authority over us, and we reject them if they're not legitimate.

Chomsky is not a 'liberal', he is radical, his criticism is for the entire system and its track record. He does not have a 'master plan', and he would reject anyone who claims to. Notice he's been called everything under the sun: Marxist, Nazi, Stalinist, Communist, anti-American, deranged, etc, etc, etc. His answer? Yeah, you DO have to be deranged to pay attention to things like elementary morality, and to actually have concern for your fellow man. Highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to think about current events, to seriously think, and to look outside the very narrow spectrum of debate in this country that is favored by the media and intellectuals.