Who Rules the World?

Product Information

And there is nothing in the published version of the book to let the reader know the reason for including these dated arguments. Just keeping to American history, George Washington regarded the common people who formed the militias that he was to command as “an exceedingly dirty and nasty people [evincing] an unaccountable kind of stupidity in the lower class of these people”.

Quite sensible diplomatic proposals by the African Union, accepted in principle by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, were ignored by the imperial triumvirate, as Africa specialist Alex de Waal reviews. I want to take issue with one criticism Roth makes because it actually brings into focus one of Chomsky’s major points about the responsibility of American citizens when it comes to the actions of our government. Yet another triumph of “humanitarian intervention”, and, as the long and often ghastly record reveals, not an unusual one, going back to its modern origins four centuries ago. Through his frequent public speeches and media appearances, Chomsky continues to influence debate about the ethical implications of American hard power and the US’s role in spreading global economic injustice—two areas that are inseparable from the study of American foreign policy. He has, in fact, punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined, a real achievement for an administration that came to office promising transparency.Here he presents a comprehensive examination of contemporary America, its behaviour at home and abroad, its single-minded pursuit and exercise of power. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the. These plans were articulated explicitly at the Bucharest Nato summit of April 2008, when Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership in Nato. In congressional testimony, the phrase “when we must” was explained more fully: the United States is entitled to resort to the “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.

Unperturbed by these and innumerable other illustrations of our fabled “yearning for democracy”, respectable commentary continued to laud President George W Bush for his dedication to “democracy promotion”, or sometimes criticized him for his naivete in thinking that an outside power could impose its democratic yearnings on others. Actually, the whole book talks about hypocrisy and double standards that “the world” has been committing throughout the years. With this freedom combined with the potential to actually influence what the government does (unlike in the former Soviet Union or, to give an example from Roth’s review, modern-day Syria) comes extraordinary responsibility.

This, it is assumed, gives state behaviour an aspect of democratic accountability, since citizens have the ability to withdraw their consent for being ruled by a government that cannot make those guarantees.