The Myth of American Idealism
How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
“For anyone wanting to find out more about the world we live in . . . there is one simple answer: read Noam Chomsky.” —The New Statesman
A sharp indictment of both American foreign policy and the national myths that support it, and an urgent warning of the threat that U.S. power poses to humanity’s future
The Myth of American Idealism offers a timely and comprehensive introduction to the incisive critiques of U.S. power that have made Noam Chomsky one of the most widely known public intellectuals of all time. Surveying the history of U.S. military and economic activity around the world, Chomsky and coauthor Nathan J. Robinson vividly trace the way the American pursuit of global domination has wrought havoc in country after country.
Chomsky and Robinson offer penetrating accounts of Washington’s relationship with the Global South, its role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—all justified with noble stories about humanitarian missions and the benevolent intentions of American policymakers. The same myths that have led to repeated disastrous wars, they argue, are now imperiling humanity’s future. Examining nuclear proliferation and climate change, they show how U.S. policies are continuing to exacerbate global threats.
For well over half a century, Noam Chomsky has committed himself to exposing governing ideologies and criticizing his country’s unchecked power. At once thorough and devastating, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to a lifetime of thought and activism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Safeguarding democracy, the long-standing stated aim of American foreign policy, is actually cover for America's desire to control other countries' resources, according to this blistering polemic. Philosopher Chomsky (On Cuba) and Current Affairs editor Robinson (Responding to the Right) argue that Americans' perception of their country as one based on principles, rather than merely the interests of its citizens, allows U.S. leaders to position the "national interest" as outweighing the rights of people abroad. Tracing this line of thinking across American foreign interventions since WWII (most of which were anti-democratic, the authors argue), they aim to show how the bald-faced imperialism of the early 20th century was papered over by this new logic of "the national interest," which used the supposed challenges to democracy posed by communism, and later "terrorism," as an excuse for resource-motivated adventurism. At times, Chomsky and Robinson's perception of all forms of governance as fundamentally insincere can come off as reductive, like when they assert that the 20th-century "ruling ideologies" of the U.S. and the Soviet Union "were largely false" and that, instead, both countries were dominated by a self-interested elite. However, the authors' top-versus-bottom analysis becomes strikingly perceptive in a final chapter analyzing how today a global elite benefits from world-killing fossil fuels. This offers rich food for thought.
Customer Reviews
DECENT 5
A perfect introduction to the consistent and apparent problems within America’s foreign policy. In the US, there is the idea that the US is a perfect good guy who is always fighting for the downtrodden. Unfortunately, this has never truly been the case. The authors do such a good job diving into the various historical examples of how the government has been a huge bully on the world stage (to put it mildly). It is an important discussion that I wish was more prevalent in common society or in regular academic settings. The evidence speaks for itself.
America’s foreign policy has not only been immoral by crushing smaller economic oppositions in the name of “national security” or “national defense” (it is always offense), but this aggressive approach only endangers America even more by radicalizing the rest of the world against us.