Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project)
by Noam Chomsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: Noam ChomskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09-01
ISBN: 0805076883
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project)
Book Review: Steven Hawkings' Question
Summary: 5 Stars
Just recently Stephen Hawkings posed a question on Yahoo Public. Hawkings asked whether it can be demonstrated that humankind will survive the next 100 years. I don't think that most people can answer this question. It asks us to question one of the most fundamental assumptions that we have about the future of the human race and life on Planet Earth. To hold this assumption without demonstration could prove to be fatal indeed. This question is the most critical question that one must ask and attempt to answer.
One way to at least begin this task would be to turn the question on its head and ask why would humankind not survive the next 100 years. In other words, identify the chief threats to the survival of humankind. In his book, Survival or Hegemony: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky does exactly that: he addresses the question concerning the chief threat to the survival of humankind in the next 100 years. The answer is quite revealing, for it is not any of the usual threats that we might identify; it's not global climate change nor weapons of mass destruction nor resource depletion nor mutant viruses, etc. All of those are, of course, urgent threats that should be taken quite seriously; however, to merely note those obvious threats is not to recognize the chief obstacle to finding and applying solutions to all of those global problems, as well as others that are likewise worth consideration.
In the first chapter of Survival or Hegemony, Chomsky begins with some reflections of Ernst Mayr, one of the great figures of contemporary biology. Mayr speculated that "the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that it is better to be smart than to be stupid,' at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that 'the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years" (1).
Perhaps the answer to Hawkings' question depends on the question of whether it is better to be smart or stupid. Could it be that humans are a sort of "'biological error,' using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves, and in the process, much else.... with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with a cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well?" (2)
The chief threat to the survival of humankind in the next 100 years is, in most cases, the very obstacle to realizing global solutions. How can we define this obstacle? Well, let's examine some recent history. For example, in the early fall of 2002, when "it was learned that a possibly terminal nuclear war was barely avoided forty years earlier," immediately after this startling discovery, "the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the militarization of space, a serious threat to survival. The administration also terminated international negotiations to prevent biological warfare and moved to ensure the inevitability of an attack on Iraq, despite popular opposition that was without historical precedent" (2). Bush and his associates "also persisted in undermining international efforts to reduce threats to the environment that are recognized to be severe..."; instead, Bush's Climate Change Science program did not even "consider the likelihood, suggested by 'a growing body of evidence' that the short term warming changes it ignores 'will trigger an abrupt nonlinear process' ..." (2-3).
Also, at the same time of the news of how the world had barely avoided thermo-nuclear war, in September 2002, the Bush administration "announced its National Security Strategy, which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent" (2-3). Enshrined in the National Security Strategy document is Bush's doctrine of preventative war, the Mein Kampf of the 21st century, which basically says that the US can wage war on any country it chooses, simply because that country represents a perceived threat to U.S. business interests and hegemony, for example, regardless of international law or the United Nations. As such, as Chomsky points out, preventative war automatically falls "within the category of war crimes."
Bush's preventative war doctrine is a declaration of war upon the world. As Arthur Schlesinger wrote: "The president has adopted a policy of 'anticipatory self-defence' that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American said it would, lives in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy" (12). As the Harvard Middle East historian, Roger Owens, observed, "Peoples and regimes will have to change the way they see the world 'from a view based on the United Nations and international law to one based on an identification' with Washington's agenda. They are being instructed by the display of force to put aside 'any serious considerations of national interest' in favor of reflecting 'American goals'" (21). As a critical review by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences points out, "noting that neither international law nor UN Charter is even mentioned in the National Security Strategy. 'The primacy of law over force [that[ has been a major thread in American foreign policy since the end of World War II' disappears from the new strategy. Also, 'all but disappeared' are the international institutions 'that extend the reach of law, and seek to constrain the powerful as well as to grant the weak a voice.' From now on, force reigns, and the US will exercise that force as it sees fit" (28).
The Bush administration has declared itself to be a "revisionist state," that "intends to rule the world permanently, becoming, some felt, a 'menace to itself and to mankind' under the leadership of 'radical nationalists' aiming for 'unilateral world domination through absolute miltary superiority.' Also, as Francis Fukuyama related, "the UN is 'perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism and indeed may be the primary mechanism through which that unilateralism will be exercised in the future'" (29).
One might be tempted to dismiss all this all this as mere idle, political rhetoric, or maybe just conspiracy theory, if it weren't for two distinct periods of American military history that consistently features global aggression, covert war, intimidation, calumny and terror during and after the Cold War era until the appearance of the National Security document, and the period which immediately followed the appearance in which the U.S. and Britain blatently attacked the international community though its "shock and awe" state-sponsored terror in a war against a sovereign country, killing at least 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in the process, upon justifications which have since proven to be completely false.
Then, as we witness in the present day, through its satellite and client state of Israel, once again, thorugh U.S. made bombs and advanced weapons technology, naked aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and terror have ravaged the country of Lebanon, leaving 1,000 innocent Lebanese civilians dead.
So, when will the international community say enough is enough? Is it possible to learn from history, from WWII, for example, when Hitler's aggression knew no limits as it attacked country after country while the world stood by in stunned silence? How much more violence can humankind take from this new "axis of evil" (U.S-Britain-Israel) before it wakes up and begins to deny, oppose and resist the state-sponsored terror and war, for it is only when state-sponsored terror and war is acknowledged and confronted with by democratic and educated populations that naked, desperate, sensationalist acts of terror can be understood and resolved: for they are, essentially, but reactions to state-sponsored terrorism.
Otherwise, there will be no end to the so-called "war on terror," it will be a permanent war, and this is just what the war pigs and profiteers want, for they are like vampires that suck the blood of the people in order to survive. Without war, no reason for their existance can be justified; yet, the state of their permanent war they prosecute and propagandize to guarantee their own survival and power threatens the survival and life of the planet and the very future of humankind.
Thus, in answer to Hawkings' question, the first step to insure that humankind has even a chance to survive the next hundred years is to end war. Any country which goes against international law and the United Nations to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity should be considered a rogue nation that must be denied, oppossed and resisted by every means possible. International fascism and imperialism must not be allowed to bring about another World War. This time the stakes really are too high because the weapons of mass destruction loom over the globe as a spectre of doom, and the resultant enviromental and ecological destruction during a permanent state of war may set the Earth on a path of no return, a path that could threaten all life.
Chomsky identifies the threat with meticulous documentation. It is not conspiracy theory nor is it a matter of idle, political rhetoric. The threat is very real because it is very historical, and it is imperative that the international community respond to this threat with a sense of urgency before it is too late.
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Summary of Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project)
"Reading Chomsky today is sobering and instructive . . . He is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet." -The New York Times Book Review
An immediate national bestseller, Hegemony or Survival demonstrates how, for 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. World-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this perilous moment and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species.
With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky tracks the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of "full spectrum dominance" and vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control-from unilateralism to the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our existence. Lucidly written, thoroughly documented, and featuring a new afterword by the author, Hegemony or Survival is a definitive statement from one of today's most influential thinkers.
An immediate national bestseller, Hegemony or Survival demonstrates how, for 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. World-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this perilous moment and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species.
With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky tracks the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of "full spectrum dominance" and vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control-from unilateralism to the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our existence. Lucidly written, thoroughly documented, and featuring a new afterword by the author, Hegemony or Survival is a definitive statement from one of today's most influential thinkers.
Noam Chomsky is considered the father of modern linguistics. In this richly detailed criticism of American foreign policy, he seeks to redefine many of the terms commonly used in the ongoing American war on terrorism. Surveying U.S. actions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Turkey, the Far East and elsewhere over the past half a century along with the modern American war in Iraq, Chomsky indicates that America is just as much a terrorist state as any other government or rogue organization. George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq drew worldwide criticism, in part because it seemed to present a new philosophy of pre-emptive war and an appearance of global empire building. But according to Chomsky, such has been the operating philosophy of American foreign policy for decades. Opponents of the Bush administration's tactics consistently point out how the American government supported Saddam Hussein for many years prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait (pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand are easy to come by) as a means of pointing out how the United States is happy to fund despots when it's in American interests. But Chomsky, armed with extensive historical notation, takes this notion further, arguing how the repression of other nations' citizenry is, in fact, the very reason Americans support certain foreign leaders. The charges made throughout the book are severe, as are the dire consequences he posits if current trends are not reversed, and Chomsky is no more likely to make friends or gain supporters from the mainstream now than he's ever been. But Hegemony or Survival is relatively dispassionate. Instead of relying on camp or shock value or personal attacks as some of his contemporaries have done, Chomsky drives his well-supported points steadily forward in an earnest and highly readable style. --John Moe
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