Hegemony or Survival : America's Quest for Global Dominance (Paperback)

Chomsky tends to write his books as updates to previous books, therefore those familiar with his past works will inevitably find themselves being exposed to facts they�ve already heard. However, as these facts are so numerous and noteworthy, only the most retentive brain will mind hearing them for a second or third time. And for newcomers what this man has to say about America�s intentions for the world will require two or three reads to soak in, and a further session of research to determine whether his meticulously documented facts could possibly all be true.

The book itself does exactly what Amazon�s synopsis says, so those in the know will click on add to basket straight away. For those unfamiliar with Chomsky, I�ll say only this: if you still question whether the US administration is willing to sacrifice innocent lives for oil, this book provides an intelligent answer.

Chomsky is an heroic intellectual who is bent on exposing Imperial deceit and injustice and promote the values of Democratic Freedom and Justice for all human beings that as a Jewish American he so values. There is no hidden agenda with Chomsky, he finds the mass murder of innocent civilians unjustifiable whether they be hundreds of thousands in a East Timor, tens of thousand Palestinians in a ghetto in Gaza, a few hundred Israelis in Tel Aviv or three thousand office workers in the twin towers.

Chomsky's main message is - How do we stop Terrorism ?

For Chomsky if the US and UK governments were to STOP participating in Terrorism they will reduce terrorism by a very substantial amount ? The logical precision of a philosopher.

Chomsky produces a clear and eminently well documented rationale for his critique of US ambition. Those who denigrate Chomsky do so because the truth is too uncomfortable. They may dismiss his writing as a rant, but that is because they choose to ignore the overwhelming use of insider statements, Pentagon reports, CIA findings, White House utterances, and all the rest of the horse's mouth. Chomsky merely puts it all together in a couple of hundred terrifying pages. Reading Chomsky it becomes harder for us to miss the true intentions behind the US quest for dominance. And of course it is also a quest for survival, because without its overwhelming military control (the US spends as much on defence as the next dozen or so countries combined, about 37% of the world total) the US would suffer a dramatic decline since its population is too small and its trade balance too severe, its social tensions too great, for it to realistically compete with anyone else except through employing its overwhelming military and technological superiority in order to exert control. That this military power is also employed to ensure economic compliance is part of what makes US policy so frightening. Chomsky warns of the risks of nuclear proliferation as a consequence of the US commitment to Balistic Missiles Defence, a project which despite its name is about offensive capability. In this book he barely touches on the environmental impact of the neo-conservative preferences, but anybody who cares about Blair's support for Bush, about the risks of nuclear war, about terrorism and about the future of our planet would do well to read this magnificent book.