Hegemony: (n.) dominance exercised by one state over others
From the world’s foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis of America’s pursuit of total world domination and the catastrophic consequences that will follow.
For over half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy’ with the aim of staking out the globe. Its leaders have shown themselves willing to follow the dream of dominance right up to the edge of extinction. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving towards the final frontiers of imperial control, towards a choice between the prerogatives of power and a livable Earth. In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why America’s rulers are willing to jeopardise the future of our species.
With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky dissects America’s quest for global supremacy, tracking the US government’s aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve full spectrum dominance’ at any cost. He vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of global politics from unilateralism and the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism and the militarisation of space unite in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our survival. In our era, he argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland.
Lucid, rigorous and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival is Chomsky’s most urgent and sweeping work in years. This second edition appears with a new afterword which tracks the development of US foreign policy since the Iraq war.
If, for reasons of chance, or circumstance (or sloth), you have to pick just one book on the subject of the American Empire, I’d say pick this one. It’s the Full Monty. It’s Chomsky at his best. Hegemony or Survival is necessary reading.‘
Arundhati Roy, activist and writer
