Product Description

From the world’s foremost intellectual activist, here is an irrefutable analysis of America’s pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow. The United States is in the process of staking out not just the globe, but the last unarmed spot in our neighbourhood – the skies – as a militarized sphere of influence. Our earth and its skies are, for the Bush administration, the final frontiers of imperial control. In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky explains how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. In our era, Chomsky argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20667 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Scholarly polemicist Noam Chomsky's latest book Hegemony or Survival argues that America's strategy for the future is nothing less than the maintenance of American hegemony through the use or threat of military force--a strategy that threatens to leave the world a more dangerous and divided place. He goes on to claim that the only other world superpower with any chance whatever of curbing America's ideologically driven quest for global dominance is World Public Opinion. Recent books on American involvement in Middle East affairs, books such as Dilip Hiro's Iraq, Rampton and Stauber's Weapons of Mass Deception, and, more recently, The Guardian sponsored The War We Could Not Stop have also drawn attention to the propaganda war waged upon the American public by the Bush administration. For Chomsky this is by no means a new development. He sees American foreign policy historically showing a remarkably pattern of hypocrisy, racism, exploitation, and cynical manipulation of public opinion by successive US administrations. What is new and disturbing about the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he says, is the precedent America and Britain have set for establishing new norms of international law. The concept of "preventative war" must have its victims and those victims must be weak, yet important enough to be worth the trouble. Any country that is opposed to US interests but is capable of defending itself--i.e., those with nuclear capabilities--will be left alone. He leaves us with the terrifying assessment that the clear and catastrophic message to opponents of American hegemony is to get nuclear--quick. It's the only way to keep the bully off our backs.

One of Chomsky's special talent remains his ability to undermine comforting platitudes--such as the idea that we Westerners have become more "humanitarian" over the last few decades or that we have been making steady moral progress. As with Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival is relentlessly damning of the American political and economic elite and highly sceptical of the idea that virtue is to be found there. But if you're looking for a more balanced and hopeful examination of America's excursion into modern empire building and the problems it poses try Michael Ignatieff's Empire Lite. --Larry Brown

Observer Nov 30 2003
"America's greatest dissenter, a one-man cultural revolution whose writing on globalisation has mobilised a generation."

Bono - U2
"The Elvis of academia"

Customer Reviews

A bit like running through treacle...
Don't get me wrong, I am a BIG fan of Chomsky. I think he is one of the most important intellectuals in the world.

But I don't have a PhD and sometimes find his work really quite hard going. Trying to pick up what the argument that he is trying to put across is sometimes difficult amonst the meticulously referenced blizard of examples.

As a lay-person I struggled to keep going through this.

The points it makes are good points but I'm sure he could have made it simpler for the public at large (myself included) to read.

Truly the majority of intellectuals are not the people who need convincing of his arguments, or being made aware of the reality of America's imperialist endeavours.

The public at large (as his book itself makes out as being the only real counter weight (superpower) to the other superpower (the US)) really need to be made aware of the arguments in this book.

The verdict is interesting, but tough to read

Hegemony or Survival
As a linguist, Mr. Chomsky has an amazing way with words which makes this book well worth a read. He describes events very well, and has an extraordinary way of explaining the hypocrisies of political propaganda and the use of words in the American political machinery.
The book thus gives a different insight into the American "empire-building" agenda than what is common, and knowing Mr. Chomsky's previous work, it is bound to be controversial, and even when you largely disagree with him, it is well-worth a read.
While it is well argued, my overall problem with Mr. Chomsky's theories on American empire building and hegemony, is his almost conspirational assumptions about the US attempts at seizing and keeping its empire. By doing this, I feel he gives a lot of credit to many US leaders who have in many cases been, at best, incompetent, and undermining of the programme. While propaganda is surely used and misused to form opinion, in a society like the US, this is not a one-sided process: there is debate, things change quickly, and I feel that Mr. Chomsky largely avoids to view the US as anything but a closed black box. Furthermore, and more strange, Mr. Chomsky largely downgrades other countries and governments as passive world actors, doing the dirty job for the US. This ignores the maze of interests and clever political skills of many political leaders, using the US to their advantage.
The world is not as black-and-white as Mr. Chomsky portrays, but his book is still well worth to read.

Hegemony or Survival
This is another eye opening book from Chomsky about American foreign and domestic policy. It covers the period from the end of the second world war, and focuses (as expected) on Iraq. It has some fascinating and shocking information (although a lot of it has been said elsewhere by various people, including Chomsky) and I would say this is a good starting place for those new to American foreign policy and practise. Sadly, considering Chomsky is a linguistics professor, this book isn't too clear at times. I found that for many pages the prose flowed coherently and put across the points extremely well, only to be followed by a couple of pages that were unfocused and hard to decipher at first read, and I've read many Chomsky and political books. This is the only reason this book got four stars from me. Overall, an insightful, fascinating, if slightly scary and depressing read. If this whets your appetite, try 'One No, many yeses' By Paul Kingsnorth for one portrayal of an alternative world view.