Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance

Abstract

In the book entitled "Hegemony or Survival", Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and one of the most controversial intellectual activists, dissects the American foreign policy one more time. His theory is supported by a detailed analysis of history. According to him, the world political leaders are currently faced with a choice between global dominance and the survival of the planet. Indeed, the leaders are likely to resort to force to be hegemonic but nowadays they do have the means to resort to force and to destroy the human race.
Chomsky has decided to examine these leaders to guess which method they are likely to choose for this undertaking. As a matter of fact, those who are able to face this choice nowadays are part of the American administration, the superpower. Far from being reassuring, this book underlines the illogical and unfair American political actions of the past and current administrations. America has goals, and they prevail over the risks.

In Chomsky's perspective, the US has two goals: to "establish an imperial grand strategy" and to "institutionalize a radical restructuring of domestic society".

In 2002, the National Security Strategy admitted that the US had the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to its global hegemony. This kind of idea is not new and Chomsky explains several examples of that theory such as the case of Nicaragua. According to that strategy, the American hegemony aims at being permanent. But the belligerence tends to go further and further in the form of the carrying out of preemptive war against "an imagined threat".