Hegemony or Survival

rdf:langString Hegemony or Survival

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rdf:langString Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

rdf:langString Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

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rdf:langString First edition cover

rdf:langString E902.C47 2003

rdf:langString Print

rdf:langString And it is essential to demand, as Chomsky does, that a country with the might of the United States stop being so selective in applying its principles. We will not allow our sovereignty to be infringed by international treaty commitments in the areas of human rights or even arms control, but we demand that others should. We rebuff the complaints of foreigners about the 650 people who remain holed up in Guantánamo kennels, denied access to lawyers and family members, with not even their names released. Yet we expect others to take heed of our protests about due process. We have official enemies -- those whose police abuses, arms shipments and electoral thefts we eagerly expose . But the sins of our allies in the war on terror are met with intentional ignorance.

rdf:langString Chomsky is wrong to think that individuals within the American government are not thinking seriously about the costs of alliances with repressive regimes; he is also wrong to suggest that it would be easy to get the balance right between liberty and security, or democracy and equality – or to figure out what the hell to do about Pakistan. But he is right to demand that officials in Washington devote themselves more zealously to strengthening international institutions, curbing arms flows and advancing human rights.

rdf:langString In Hegemony or Survival, Chomsky returns to themes that have motivated most of his political writing, including the blindness of western states to their own moral failures and inconsistencies and the ruthless insistence of successive US administrations that the world will do their bidding.

rdf:langString What sets Chomsky's work apart from so many others who write social and political theory today is that he is equally critical of the Democratic party as he is of the Republican party. Chomsky's theory portrays America's foreign policy as being consistent across partisan lines. Democrats and Republicans for that matter appear more as two wings of a capitalist, imperialist party than the two vastly different political ideologies that are presented in the popular media.

rdf:langString Maintaining a hold on political power and enhancing US control of the world's primary energy sources are major steps toward the twin goals that have been declared with considerable clarity: to institutionalize a radical restructuring of domestic society that will roll back the progressive reforms of a century, and to establish an imperial grand strategy of permanent world domination.

rdf:langString November 2003

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rdf:langString —Kate Mann.

rdf:langString —Michael T. Boyle, 2005.

rdf:langString —Samantha Power, 2004.

rdf:langString Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a study of the American empire written by the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was first published in the United States in November 2003 by Metropolitan Books and then in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books. Chomsky's main argument in Hegemony or Survival is that the socio-economic elite who control the United States have pursued an "Imperial Grand Strategy" since the end of World War II to maintain global hegemony through military, political, and economic means. He argues that in doing so they have repeatedly shown a total disregard for democracy and human rights, in stark contrast to the US government's professed support for those values. He further argues that this continual pursuit of global hegemony threatens the existence of humanity itself because of the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Drawing historical examples from 1945 through to 2003, Chomsky looks at the US government's support for regimes responsible for mass human rights abuses—including ethnic cleansing and genocide—namely El Salvador, Colombia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, and Indonesia. He also discusses US support for militant dissident groups widely considered "terrorists", particularly in Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as direct military interventions, such as the Vietnam War, NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Afghan War and Iraq War, to further its power and grasp of resources. He highlights that US foreign policy—whether controlled by Republican or Democratic administrations—pursues the same agenda of gaining access to lucrative resources and maintaining US world dominance. Mainstream press reviews in the US were mixed and were largely negative in the UK, although a review in Asia was more positive. In a speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez openly praised the work. Sales of the book surged after the recommendation, its rank on Amazon.com rising to #1 in paperback and #6 in hardcover in only a few days.