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Hegemony or survival :

America's quest for global dominance

Noam Chomsky

Contents

1. Priorities and Prospects

2. Imperial Grand Strategy

3. The New Era of Enlightenment

4. Dangerous Times

5. The Iraq Connection

6. Dilemmas of Dominance

7. Cauldron of Animosities

8. Terrorism and Justice: Some Useful Truisms

9. A Passing Nightmare?

Notes Index

All notes in this text refer to original notes located here

http://www.americanempireproject.com/chomsky/hegemony_notes.htm

Metropolitan Books

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866

115 West 18th Street

New York, New York 10011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Chomsky, Noam.

Hegemony or survival : America's quest for global dominance / Noam Chomsky. — 1st ed.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8050-7400-7

1. United States—Foreign relations—2001- 2. United States—Foreign relations— 20th century. 3.

Imperialism. 4. United States—Military policy. 5. Unilateral acts (International law) 6. Intervention

(International law) 7. State-sponsored terrorism. 8. War on Terrorism, 2001- I. Title.

E902.C47 2003 327.73'009'0511—dc22

2003058195

Please see www.hegemonyorsurvival.net or www.americanempireproject.com for

expanded endnotes and an e-book with additional background, discussion, and

sources.

First Edition 2003

Printed in the United States of America

13579 10 8642

Chapter 1

Priorities and Prospects

A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published

some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence. 1 He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the

adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form

of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life

at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to

establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally

assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants.

Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by

selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be

smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for

example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the

rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000

years."

We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of

whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question

will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans

were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves

and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just

that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have

demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred

years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more

complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well.

TWO SUPERPOWERS

The year 2003 opened with many indications that concerns about human survival are all

too realistic. To mention just a few examples, in the early fall of 2002 it was learned that

a possibly terminal nuclear war was barely avoided forty years earlier. Immediately after

this startling discovery, the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the

militarization of space, a serious threat to survival. The administration also terminated

international negotiations to prevent biological warfare and moved to ensure the

inevitability of an attack on Iraq, despite popular opposition that was without historical

precedent.

Aid organizations with extensive experience in Iraq and studies by respected medical

organizations warned that the planned invasion might precipitate a humanitarian

catastrophe. The warnings were ignored by Washington and evoked little media interest.

A high-level US task force concluded that attacks with weapons of mass destruction

(WMD) within the United States are "likely," and would become more so in the event of

war with Iraq. Numerous specialists and intelligence agencies issued similar warnings,

adding that Washington's belligerence, not only with regard to Iraq, was increasing the

long-term threat of international terrorism and proliferation of WMD. These warnings too

were dismissed.

In September 2002 the Bush administration announced its National Security Strategy,

which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US

global hegemony, which is to be permanent. The new grand strategy aroused deep

concern worldwide, even within the foreign policy elite at home. Also in September, a

propaganda campaign was launched to depict Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to

the United States and to insinuate that he was responsible for the 9-11 atrocities and was

planning others. The campaign, timed to the onset of the midterm congressional elections,

was highly successful in shifting attitudes. It soon drove American public opinion off the

global spectrum and helped the administration achieve electoral aims and establish Iraq

as a proper test case for the newly announced doctrine of resort to force at will.

President Bush and his associates also persisted in undermining international efforts to

reduce threats to the environment that are recognized to be severe, with pretexts that

barely concealed their devotion to narrow sectors of private power. The administration's

Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), wrote Science magazine editor Donald

Kennedy, is a travesty that "included no recommendations for emission limitation or

other forms of mitigation," contenting itself with "voluntary reduction targets, which,

even if met, would allow US emission rates to continue to grow at around 14% per

decade." The CCSP did not even consider the likelihood, suggested by "a growing body

of evidence," that the short-term warming changes it ignores "will trigger an abrupt

nonlinear process," producing dramatic temperature changes that could carry extreme

risks for the United States, Europe, and other temperate zones. The Bush administration's

"contemptuous pass on multilateral engagement with the global warming problem,"

Kennedy continued, is the "stance that began the long continuing process of eroding its

friendships in Europe," leading to "smoldering resentment." 2

By October 2002 it was becoming hard to ignore the fact that the world was "more

concerned about the unbridled use of American power than . . . about the threat posed by

Saddam Hussein," and "as intent on limiting the giant's power as ... in taking away the

despot's weapons." 3 World concerns mounted in the months that followed, as the giant

made clear its intent to attack Iraq even if the UN inspections it reluctantly tolerated

failed to unearth weapons that would provide a pretext. By December, support for

Washington's war plans scarcely reached 10 percent almost anywhere outside the US,

according to international polls. Two months later, after enormous worldwide protests,

the press reported that "there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United

States and world public opinion" ("the United States" here meaning state power, not the

public or even elite opinion). 4

By early 2003, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable

heights throughout the world, along with distrust of the political leadership. Dismissal of

elementary human rights and needs was matched by a display of contempt for democracy

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