Author: Noam Chomsy
Publisher: Viva Books
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 319
ISBN/UPC (if available): 1741149142
Description
The world’s foremost critic of US foreign policy exposes the hollow promised of democracy in US actions abroad – and at home.
The United States has repeatedly asserted its right to intervene militarily against ‘failed states’ around the globe. In this much anticipated follow-up to his international bestseller Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky shows how the United States itself shares features with other failed states – and therefore is increasingly a danger to its own people and to the world.
Failed states, Chomsky writes, are those that are unable or unwilling ‘to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction’ and ‘regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law’. Though they may have democratic forms, Chomsky notes, failed states suffer from a serious ‘democratic deficit’ that deprives their democratic institutions of real substance.
Exploring the latest developments in US foreign and domestic policy, Chomsky revels Washington’s plans to further militaries the planet; assesses the dangerous consequences of the occupation of Iraq, which has fuelled global outrage at the US; documents Washington’s self-exemption from international norms, including the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention and the Kyoto Protocol; and examines how the US electoral system is designed to eliminate genuine political alternatives, impeding any meaningful democracy.
Forceful, lucid and meticulously documented, Failed States offers a comprehensive analysis of a global superpower that has long claimed the right to reshape other nations-toppling governments it deems illegitimate, invading states judged to threaten its interests, imposing sanctions on regimes it opposes – while it sown democratic institution are in severe crisis, and its policies and practices recklessly place the world on the brink of nuclear and environmental disaster. Systematically dismantling the United States’ pretence of being the World’s arbiter of democracy, Failed States is Chomsky’s most focused – and urgent – critique to date.
Contents
Preface
1. Stark, Dreadful, Inescapable
2. Outlaw States
3. Illegal but Legitimate
4. Democracy Promotion Abroad
5. Supporting Evidence:
The Middle East
6. Democracy Promotion at Home
Afterward
Notes
Index