Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen
• Position: The Bubble of American Supremacy - A Bitter Harvest: US Foreign Policy and Afghanistan - Book Review

HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL: America's Quest for Global Dominance

Author: Noam Chomsky Published by: Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2003, 278pp, $24.95.

THE BUBBLE OF AMERICAN SUPREMACY

Author: George Soros Published by: Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2004, 208pp, $29.95.

A BITTER HARVEST: US Foreign Policy and Afghanistan

Author: Tom Lansford Published by: Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, 206pp, 42.50 [pounds sterling].

A spectrum of approaches to US foreign policy is bracketed by these three books. In the order listed above they typify

* the root-and-branch radical critique,

* the more-in-sorrow-than anger admonition with prescriptions, and

* the neutral scholarly analysis.

The laudatory triumphalist end of the spectrum is not represented here, but it is the main subject of Chomsky's and Soros's books.

Chomsky surely fulfils his acolytes' hopes in this, his first book in a decade. He eloquently lambastes American foreign policy as greedy, bullying, and hypocritical. The expansion of America is as inexorable as it is execrable. Having begun in 1803 and accelerated in the early 1940s, US hegemony shows no sign of pausing. On the contrary, it is burgeoning under the presidency of George W. Bush.

Today's interventions are more rhetorically subtle but not fundamentally different from the gunboat diplomacy and annexations of the colonial era, in Chomsky's view. The idealistic pronouncements of US leaders are little more than lies to cover neo-imperial aggrandisement. Chomsky dissects US humanitarian intervention, war crimes prosecution, economic aid, counter-terrorism, arms control, relations with the United Nations, and trade diplomacy, funding each to be toxic at the core.

The consequence is not only an undermining of international comity by US armed unilateralism but also a material threat to human existence, by nuclear proliferation and war(s) if not resource exhaustion and pollution.

Can anything impede this slide to disaster? Yes, the people, hailed by Chomsky as 'the planet's second superpower'. They are manifested in the form of the anti-globalisation movement, the popular revolt by the South against file World Trade Organisation, and domestic grassroots nongovernmental organisations and solidarity movements. Chomsky heralds also the World Social Forum but provides no details of its goals, methods, or track record. Perhaps in his next book Chomsky will reveal more about 'the planet's second superpower' and how it can counteract the first one. Meanwhile...