This is a good read. The New edition Afterward is especially terrifying in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.
NextThe result is a huge wake up call.
Not surprisingly, Russia, along with much of the Global South, has a different opinion, as do some prominent western voices.
Much of what he says here has been said before in his other books, the philosophy is only updated with references to more recent events.
However, what I didn't expect was this book to be so unfocused and close to unreadable.
If there was no path forward at the end, then I think the earlier bits that hammered the point of failure and evil, needed to include what the alternative, non-evil sorry for the clumsy wording actions might have been. But because it will make you more aware of the amount of injustice that is happening in our world back then and today. China is constructing a modernized version of the old silk roads, with the intent not only of integrating the region under Chinese influence, but also of reaching Europe and the Middle Eastern oil-producing regions.
NextI don't see the point.
However, Chomsky closes his deliberations with the powerful alternative question to the opening one - i.
NextThe title is not really a question he seeks to answer, more a prompt to explore geopolitical strategies employed since the 1950s to today.
But we would do well to keep in mind that this level of abstraction can also be highly misleading.
NextTo be sure, there is plenty worth criticizing about American machinations in world affairs, but it takes a dangerously obtuse and privileged naïveté to equate, as Chomsky so blithely does, the morality of a US president with that of a despotic North Korean leader or an Al-Quaida terrorist.